Managed Service Programme (MSP)

An MSP is when an expert partner sources and manages the administration of non-permanent resources and tasks. Hays MSP streamlines your contingent workforce procurement, saving you time and money, improving quality, and giving you greater visibility and control over temporary workers, contractors, and consultants. No matter your challenge, Hays is committed to helping you solve it. 

Ready to transform your workforce? Let’s talk about your MSP. Contact us today 

A Managed Service Programme (MSP) covers the end‑to‑end management of an organisation’s contingent workforce. This typically includes supplier management, demand intake, worker engagement processes, compliance oversight, reporting, and ongoing governance.

Through an MSP, organisations gain a single, structured framework to manage non‑permanent workers such as contractors, temporary staff, and consultants. The programme provides greater visibility, consistency, and control across hiring activity, while reducing administrative complexity and risk.

An MSP helps employers save costs, optimise processes, attract top talent, and focus on their core business activities. It captures, manages, and tracks all requests, vendors, workers, timesheets, and spend through a single process and technology. This provides an enterprise-level view of activity. It also standardises processes, introduces best practices, and enforces policies, enabling you to recognise savings and efficiencies such as: 

• Streamlined processes to reduce both the time to hire and the burden on hiring managers 
• Consolidated purchasing to reduce costs 
• Vendors managed based on the factors that matter most to you, from quality of candidates to speed of responsiveness 
• Control processes implemented to reduce the risks associated with devolved purchasing practices and hiring 

While these models can complement one another, they serve different purposes:

• An MSP (Managed Service Programme) focuses on the strategic management and governance of a contingent workforce, including supplier management, processes, compliance, and visibility across non‑permanent hiring.
• CMO (Contractor Management Outsourcing) typically manages the administration, compliance, and payment of pre‑identified contractors, without overseeing sourcing or supplier strategy.
• RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) is designed to manage permanent or project‑based recruitment activity, rather than contingent workforce management.

An MSP is often used as the overarching framework for managing contingent labour, with CMO or RPO services deployed alongside it where appropriate.

An MSP supports compliance and governance in the UK by introducing standardised processes, controls, and oversight across contingent workforce engagement.

This includes managing supplier adherence to agreed policies, improving visibility of workforce activity and spend, and supporting compliance with UK employment and labour regulations. By centralising governance and reporting, an MSP helps organisations reduce risk, improve audit readiness, and maintain consistent standards across departments and locations.

An MSP is most commonly adopted by organisations with complex or high‑volume contingent workforce requirements, particularly where multiple suppliers, locations, or hiring teams are involved.

While MSPs are often associated with larger enterprises, they can also be suitable for growing organisations that require greater control, transparency, and governance as their use of non‑permanent workers increases. The scope and scale of an MSP can be tailored to align with an organisation’s size, maturity, and workforce strategy.

Most MSPs are charged as either a percentage of contingent workforce spend, or a price per transaction fee. We can also tailor payment options to the specific needs of your organisation, including a fixed fee or a performance-based pricing model, in which savings are shared. 

Our expertise in recruitment outsourcing solutions spans over 20 years of experience, honed through working with hundreds of employers. 

We provide a range of services from supporting global financial services providers to meet new regulation requirements, to delivering a consistent and efficient approach to staffing multiple service centres for leading IT infrastructure service providers. 

We’ll explore the options available when it comes to supplier management, tailored to the specific challenges and ambitions faced by your organisation and MSP implementation. We’ll always choose to champion enablement over control. 

The first step is to set up a multidisciplinary team, consisting of HR and procurement, as well as line management from the teams which hire the most temporary resources. Securing engagement from this project team ensures key perspectives are taken into consideration and that your stakeholders are in agreement before the solution is chosen. Sustained support and unambiguous communications are essential for a successful outsourcing solution. 

A Managed Service Provider (MSP) helps you source, manage and govern your contingent workforce by acting as a single point of contact for suppliers, processes and compliance. Hays’ Managed Service Programme improves access to in‑demand skills, provides better visibility and control, and uses data and market insight to support smarter workforce decisions.

Hays is a global MSP provider that helps organisations unlock agility, innovation and growth. Through our Managed Service Programme, we combine a broad talent network, market intelligence and tailored technology to deliver compliant, efficient workforce management and a high‑quality stakeholder experience.