It’s no secret that the staffing trade is dealing with financial modifications. In keeping with the SIA | Bullhorn Staffing Indicator, staffing hours have dipped 16% year-over-year as of July 2023. In the meantime, rising rates of interest are driving up prices, throwing important monetary choices into query. How can staffing companies set themselves up for achievement, no matter these headwinds?
Harvard Enterprise Evaluation carried out a research of 4,700 corporations earlier than, throughout, and after a recession and uncovered some invaluable insights:
- 17% of corporations don’t survive a recession.
- 80% that survive don’t return to pre-recession gross sales and revenue development charges even three years afterward.
- 9% flourish post-recession.
The organizations that flourished weren’t those who battened the hatches and weathered the storm; they have been forward-looking and took a progressive strategy. What do they do in a different way from their competitors?
- Function effectively to scale back prices completely.
- Keep intently linked to clients to win market share.
- Make investments strategically in instruments to reply sooner to a future rise in demand.
With these methods, these companies outperformed their friends by at the least 10% in gross sales and revenue development. On this three-part weblog collection, we’ll take a deeper have a look at this progressive strategy and unpack how one can set your agency up for each short-term and long-term success.
To speak about greatest approaches to financial uncertainty, Bullhorn’s Joe Wertz spoke with three best-in-class trade consultants who carry greater than 70 mixed years of expertise to the desk – Lauren Jones, Founding father of Leap Consulting Options, Maurice Fuller, Founding father of StaffingTec, and Tom Erb, President at Tallann Sources – to unpack how organizations can optimize their current processes and run a extra environment friendly enterprise.
Learn on for his or her ideas on documenting processes, streamlining workflows with automation, and the Metrics That Matter, or take a look at a recording of their dialog.
Understanding your corporation
All of it begins along with your mission, imaginative and prescient, and values. Have a transparent thought of who you might be as a corporation and wrap all the things you do, together with expertise and course of, round that, stated Jones. As you make clear your imaginative and prescient, bear in mind your three key stakeholders: your candidates, purchasers, and colleagues.
As soon as that’s established, it’s time to take inventory of your processes. Staffing companies have a surprisingly great amount of processes, stated Fuller. Documenting these company-wide processes is foundational to start optimizing your corporation. He suggested that for those who don’t have the time and assets to doc all of them, give attention to those who you wish to enhance upon, particularly these tied to the Metrics That Matter. Accessing insights into how your corporation is working, even in only a few key areas, can drive actual monetary outcomes whereas working inside restricted assets.
“If you happen to don’t have course of in place, you’re winging it,” added Erb. When your competitors is slowing right down to climate the storm, that’s the proper time to guage and doc your workflows and achieve a aggressive edge.
Leveraging information and expertise
After getting an understanding of your course of and workflows, it’s time to guage the instruments at your disposal: your information and your tech. Understanding your information is the important thing to remaining each agile and aggressive, stated Jones. Wertz echoed this, noting that information hygiene and well being go a great distance.
When you could have all your processes aligned and your information organized, it’s clear the place tech can do the heavy lifting. “Course of is barely nearly as good as its implementation,” stated Erb. He added that the majority staffing expertise already has greatest practices in place. There’s no have to reinvent the wheel; consult with and implement these greatest practices as they relate to your current workflows, even when you might want to modify them to fit your group’s wants.
That is very true for automation, stated Jones. Her group’s mantra: “Automation on repetition, individuals on relationships.” What work is repetitive? The place do you might want to give attention to relationships? Fuller suggests constructing a listing of how recruiters and gross sales reps use the majority of their time to determine the place to focus automations to optimize processes. “Automation gained’t be your largest funding, nevertheless it strikes countless quantities of metrics,” Jones added.
Your success with instruments like automation will probably be restricted in case your information isn’t clear. With out clear information, it’s tough to correctly consider your metrics and discover the place to develop.
Automation may help construct connections along with your candidates and purchasers by holding you seen, and your individuals can shore up these connections by constructing significant relationships. In spite of everything, candidates, purchasers, and even colleagues wish to really feel linked above all. If you happen to leverage tech to optimize your processes and construct connections, you possibly can’t go unsuitable.
For extra on constructing connections to steer by means of uncertainty, keep tuned for the second a part of our weblog collection.
