In 2019, I sat in a meeting room listening to a CEO confidently declare that remote work would never be part of their company culture. A few months later, like most of us, they were scrambling to adapt to a world they hadn’t seen coming.
I think about that moment a lot. Not because it’s a lesson about remote work — we’ve all absorbed that one by now. But because it captures something more fundamental about how organisations manage their workforces. We build systems, processes, and assumptions around the way things are. And then the world moves, and we discover just how fragile those foundations were.
The extended workforce is that moment, right now. And most organisations aren’t ready.
The “beautiful chaos” problem
A few years ago, a HR director described her workforce to me as “beautiful chaos.” A mix of permanent employees, contractors, consultants, temporary workers, and freelancers — collaborating across time zones, disciplines, and engagement types. She loved what it made possible. The agility, the specialist skills, the ability to scale up or down quickly. But she admitted it kept her up at night too.
She’s not alone. In almost every organisation I work with, the extended workforce has grown significantly over the past decade — often without anyone deliberately deciding to grow it. It happened deal by deal, project by project, department by department. And now it’s substantial. In some sectors, extended workers make up 40-50% of the total workforce.
The problem isn’t the size. It’s what’s behind it.
Seven systems and no single truth
Here’s what that HR director’s organisation actually looked like under the hood.
Seven different systems managing different parts of their extended workforce. HR had their platform. Procurement had theirs. Finance processed invoices through a third. Individual departments had their own workarounds. The MSP had its own reporting layer. And somewhere in the gap between all of them, the actual picture of who was working for the organisation, doing what, through which suppliers, at what cost — simply didn’t exist.
This isn’t unusual. It’s the norm.
When I ask organisations to answer basic questions about their extended workforce, the answers are rarely clean. How many extended workers do you currently have engaged? What’s your total extended workforce spend this quarter? Which suppliers are active in your supply chain right now? Who is responsible for compliance across all engagement types?
Silence. Partial answers. Confident responses that turn out to be wrong.
The fragmentation isn’t a technology problem. It’s a governance problem. Nobody owns the whole picture, so nobody builds the infrastructure to see it.
Why this matters more now than it did two years ago
Organisations have operated with this fragmentation for years and mostly got away with it. The extended workforce was a cost line, not a strategic asset. As long as the invoices were paid and the workers turned up, the governance gaps stayed invisible.
That’s changing fast.
From April 2026, joint and several liability for umbrella company tax failures means your organisation can be pursued for the full unpaid tax bill if a supplier fails to meet its PAYE obligations. Not a portion. Not a penalty. The whole amount. And HMRC can come to you first, before pursuing the umbrella company itself.
The Employment Rights Bill will bring further regulatory oversight. IR35 has already shifted off-payroll working responsibilities to end clients. The direction of travel is clear: organisations will increasingly be held accountable for their entire workforce, not just those on the permanent payroll.
Seven systems and no single source of truth is no longer just inefficient. It’s a liability.
What governance actually looks like
Here’s what I want to push back on, though: the instinct to solve this with another system.
The organisations I’ve seen try to fix fragmentation by buying more technology end up with eight systems instead of seven. The problem was never the tools. It was the absence of anyone owning the strategic layer that sits above the tools.
Effective extended workforce governance isn’t a platform. It’s a function. Someone — or some structure — that holds the complete picture. That can answer the basic questions. That connects HR strategy, procurement decisions, finance data, and operational reality into something coherent.
In practice, this means a few specific things.
Clear ownership. Not “HR and Procurement share responsibility” — which means neither truly owns it. One function leads. Others contribute. Accountability is unambiguous.
Cross-functional visibility. The data from your MSP, your direct engagements, your umbrella supply chain, your SOW arrangements — it needs to flow into one place where decisions can actually be made. Not perfectly. Not immediately. But deliberately, over time.
A governance rhythm. Regular reviews that ask the right questions. Not just “are the invoices being paid” but “are we managing this workforce in a way that serves the organisation’s strategy?” That’s a different conversation, and most organisations aren’t having it.
Supplier relationships that go beyond contracts. The organisations with the best extended workforce outcomes treat their suppliers as partners in governance, not just delivery mechanisms. They share data. They have honest conversations about performance. They build relationships where compliance is a shared objective, not a battleground.
HR’s moment
I genuinely believe this is HR’s opportunity — and I don’t say that as a consolation prize for a function that’s been squeezed out of extended workforce conversations for years.
HR understands workforce strategy. It bridges functions. It thinks about the human dimensions of how work gets done. And the extended workforce isn’t just a procurement category — it’s a significant and growing part of how organisations access talent, build capability, and deliver work.
The organisations I’ve seen get this right are the ones where HR has stepped into the orchestration role. Not alone — this absolutely requires Procurement, Finance, and Operations at the table. But with HR providing the strategic lens that keeps the conversation about people, not just process.
The CEO who told me remote work would never happen to them wasn’t wrong because they failed to predict the pandemic. They were wrong because they’d built their assumptions on a world that was already changing. The extended workforce has been changing for a decade. April 2026 is just the moment the consequences become undeniable.
The question isn’t whether to fix the governance gap. It’s whether you fix it before the bill arrives.
Operating at the heart of the workforce ecosystem.
If you want to understand where your governance gaps actually sit, start with a conversation. No agenda, no pitch — just an honest look at what you’re working with.
Written by:
Founder
I’m an art school graduate who ended up running a record label in Lisbon before finding my way into PMO. Not the most obvious path — but looking back, the thread is obvious. I’ve always been drawn to complex, moving-parts problems, and I’ve always wanted to work differently.
That second part matters. Extended workforce is about people choosing how they work. I found my way to this space because I wanted that freedom myself — and now I’m here to help make it work better for everyone in the ecosystem.
I founded RedWizard in 2014 when I realised how fragmented extended workforce management actually is — and the impact that has on both individual and collective effectiveness. Coming from a PMO background, I saw that fragmentation differently to most. Where others accepted it, I saw a missed opportunity. My early work focused on proving that — building a cross-functional Centre of Excellence on a global programme that brought client teams and strategic partners together around the same table. When people with different perspectives start sharing stories and challenges openly, the opportunity becomes obvious.
I’m at my best working with mid-sized organisations where I can genuinely feel the difference we make.