How Schneider Electric hires freelancers efficiently with Malt

Transforming the business: Key results

Key challenges Schneider Electric faced

Before working with Malt, Schneider Electric wasn’t leveraging freelancing as a strategic workforce channel, and their engagement process with self-employed contributors was decentralised. Their Talent Acquisition strategies were focused on permanent employees, leaving a blind spot when it came to the on-demand workforce. With a global footprint in over 100 countries, they needed a more efficient way to tap into the growing pool of independent talents, at scale. Schneider Electric saw an opportunity to:

• Access the right talent at the right time: Schneider Electric required flexible, uninterrupted access to specialised skills, allowing them to act with agility when resources are quickly needed to fill a gap with flexible project lengths.
• Foster innovation by permanently bringing the outside in: with a pool of workers engaged in continuous learning, to stay relevant when the half-life of skills is shrinking fast. 
• Integrate tools for easy access: With multiple tools and distinct systems in place, Schneider Electric faced the challenge of unifying procurement and hiring operations to effectively scale freelancing across the organisation.

Talent access reimagined

Malt partnered with Schneider Electric’s Procurement and HR departments to transform their global freelancing operations. In addition to providing a user-friendly platform with actionable insights, Malt’s team offered tailored communication strategies and change management support to integrate freelance sourcing into the business. Together with the Schneider Electric project team, they co-led strategic organisational tactics to scale freelancing globally in a seamless manner. 

Malt provided Schneider Electric with:

• An easily accessible platform for all European Schneider Electric employees to source, manage, and pay freelancers 
• On-demand data and insights such as freelancer categories and headcount, the number of ongoing projects, and more
• Internal compliance including security, payment compliance for all freelancers
• Simple tech integration for direct sourcing via Coupa catalogs, making hiring freelancers as simple as possible for Schneider Electric hiring managers

Schneider Electric is a global company that employs 150,000 people worldwide. The company has an ambitious growth strategy and in order to reach its business goals effectively, they have extended their talent ecosystem by including top tier freelancers in their skills strategy.

At a time when a quarter of all tech jobs in Europe are held by freelancers, Schneider Electric wanted to explore a wide pool of skills to meet its transformation objectives, particularly on the digital front. They first began working with Malt by piloting a proof of concept in France in 2023, to anticipate any challenges with hiring managers, and prepare a secured framework in terms of cybersecurity and confidentiality norms. 

Two-thirds into the year they had confirmed a strong internal appetite for this new model, seen as complementary to the existing talent strategy. At that point they were convinced to scale, roll out the partnership with Malt in Europe, and integrate freelancing as a dimension of their global people strategy across their entire group. 

Key elements of a successful freelancing program

For a global player like Schneider Electric who went from 0 to 1 with integrating freelancers through a select few hiring managers, two things were clear. They would need to:

1. Make the process to procure, pay, and manage freelancers super simple without adding extra work and additional tools for hiring managers to use
2. Educate, communicate, and entice their entire organisation to trust and onboard in a new way of accessing critical skills.

One platform, zero complexity: reimagining talent access technology 

Malt's integration with Schneider Electric’s Coupa system streamlined the entire hiring process by allowing users to access a curated pool of freelancers through a single interface. Malt’s marketplace enabled Schneider Electric’s hiring managers to quickly identify top candidates based on the specific skills needed for each project. Automated payment processing and compliance checks also helped reduce the manual effort required from HR and procurement teams.

Connecting Malt with Coupa’s procure-to-pay system synchronised the entire hiring workflow, empowering users to source, hire, and pay freelancers on one surface—reducing complexity and eliminating the need to juggle multiple tasks and applications. 

“Through Malt, we have access to a vast variety of freelancers, and we know that we're going to be compliant with all our regulations and the internal rules that we defined.” says Klaids Lafon de Ribeyrolles Vice President for Indirect Procurement Schneider Electric.

With Malt, Schneider Electric has avoided administrative overhead, accelerated onboarding timeline, and received data-driven insights that enable smarter sourcing strategies and robust compliance management. 

Beyond technology: crafting a human-centric approach to workforce transformation 

Though technical integration is essential, the human dimension is paramount. Successful implementation of new technology and ways of working hinges on clear communication, robust training, and active advocacy to drive organisational change and alignment. 

Schneider Electric sought more than a workforce supplier, they needed a partner to help them build their freelancer hiring and onboarding strategy from the ground up. 

Hand in hand with Malt, Schneider Electric’s HR and procurement departments played key roles in communicating and formalising freelancing within the organisation by:

• Sharing best practices from outside the company to internal teams, encouraging wide-spread adoption 
• Co-creating some of the new processes to best fit and adapt to freelancer models 
• Ensuring freelancers across the organisation operate according to Schneider Electric’s guidelines (e.g., putting the right contractual agreements in place, including data privacy, cybersecurity, and compliance clauses)
• Collaborating across teams to create change management, communication, events, assets, to share and implement the new talent access strategy

Why Malt?

Malt provides a one-stop shop marketplace, project management tools, and technical integration with over 85 purchasing and Vendor Management Systems (VMS) to enable hiring managers to access and manage top freelancers seamlessly. With Malt’s new AI Search, hiring managers can get extra support to get matched with top freelancers.

Beyond leveraging freelancers, Schneider Electric has been looking at building a strategic vision and clarifying how internal and external talents can complement each other to stay on top of the competition, contributing to a dynamic mix and preventing any misuse.

“From a procurement standpoint, Malt really gives me visibility across different parts of the organization in terms of the use of freelancers. Malt’s ability to aggregate this data on a regular basis and have the data available at my fingertips is super important.” - Linda Lin, Director for Indirect Procurement at Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric and Malt revolutionise talent access together | Malt