Best practice for storing Non-employees in Employee Master

 I am implementing HCM for a global company, and they need to track several personnel type information and history, including time and attendance for Non-employees (consultants, contractors, etc).  I'd like to know the best practices out there for handling this type of business requirement.  They will have up to a couple thousand records like this, so it would be best if these kinds of records would be easily distinguished and filtered on the various employee information grids.  They are on 9.0 and process payroll for US sites but will not be processing payroll for the global location requiring that these Non-employees be