Maximizing the ROI of digital staffing (Part 2)
In last month’s blog, we discussed best practices to maximize the ROI of a digital staffing initiatives around retaining/growing clients and workers. After all, matchmaking between these two groups of constituents is the whole reason third party staffing exists! But what about the agency itself? What does a small or midsized agency need to do internally in order to capitalize on the sudden trend of app-based staffing?
Nothing happens without a leader
The first thing an agency needs in order extend into the digital space is a leader with a vision! Sir Isaac Newton said that objects in motion stay in motion unless another force acts upon it. Agency owners and leaders need to be the force that encourages an agency already in motion to adapt to the changing marketspace. You don’t have to be a software geek or “tech bro” to make the determination that a staffing app is crucial for the future of an agency. The only thing leadership needs is a vision of where the staffing industry is heading, and the ability to communicate to the front line troops that mobile staffing is crucial to long term success. After that, leaders should empower (and reward / hold accountable) department leaders to achieve well defined goals for implementation and adoption.
It is also a great practice for the agency leader to stay involved at a high level. At Arrived Workforce Connections, we facilitate this by alternating detail focused, weekly engineering calls with bi-weekly leadership calls. These usually include key representatives of both Arrived and our clients, and are a great forum for planning and strategy. This also gives leaders on both side a chance to hear progress, ask questions and generally keep great communication flowing.
Build workflow to scale efficiently
There are many moving parts to taking a person off the street and turning them into a billable hour for a staffing agency. Because of this complexity, it is a great idea to take a look at existing client/worker workflows in conjunction with a digital staffing implementation. Our team of engineers have had great success collaborating with multi-disciplinary client teams (recruiting, operations, IT, sales, etc.) to create opportunities to leverage Arrived technology for efficiency. The Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is usually the heart of the agency, so Arrived is designed to seamlessly “push” and “pull” data with a variety of industry leading ATS applications with cloud-based architecture for bi-direction API integration. We have even been successful in efficiently sharing data with server based systems through webhooks and other data calls where an API is not available. The important take away here is that the pace of technology innovation is happening incredibly fast, so whatever systems that a staffing agency uses needs to play well in the sandbox with others programs!
Let recruiters handle the relationships
Digital staffing technology like Arrived does not eliminate the need for recruiters, but rather it eliminates the low value “grind” work, such as the fire drill that results with short notice work orders. With much of the urgent work happening on autopilot, recruiters can shift focus to higher value tasks like building relationships and providing great service. Another time sucker for recruiters are shifts that are cancelled with short notice (or even worse, no-shows). With Arrived’s digital staffing technology these unexpected openings are automatically rebroadcast to workers with matching positions and skills, filling shifts that might have otherwise gone unfilled.
Let’s reimagine the art of worker deployment together
The Arrived digital staffing platform helps grow and retain workers and clients through convenient, intuitive technology. We want to partner with agencies of all sizes to be leaders in the emerging space of app-based staffing! It is time to prepare for a rapidly changing market with a fully branded app in the Apple App/Google Play store, right alongside the big national firms. If you want to know more or even just discuss market conditions and strategy, grab some time on my schedule here.