Laura Clark, CEO of Osborne Appointments (OA Group), and Kate Shoesmith, Deputy CEO of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) joined Michael Zimmerman of JoinedUp to discuss the “Challenges of adopting tech to manage shift workers.” Here are some of the key ideas from that webinar.
Despite an uncertain economic environment, employers across all sectors report a need to hire and a shortage of qualified candidates. In both the UK and the US, unemployment stands at less than 4%, the lowest rate in more than 20 years. Businesses simply can’t find people to fill all the roles available. And without workers, businesses can’t grow.
At the same time, people are changing their expectations about work. Workers who had never considered temporary work are now looking to get the most they possibly can from the job market. For many reasons, from childcare responsibilities to a need for greater flexibility, skilled workers are opting for contingent work assignments. As external workers now make up nearly half the workforce.
Recruitment and staffing agencies are struggling to meet the demand. Especially in dynamic areas like high-volume, shift-based staffing, recruiters are working harder than ever to find, qualify, engage, and schedule workers with the right skills at the right price and the right availability to meet their client’s demands. Too often their staffing processes and technology are inadequate for the task.
According to an informal poll conducted during the webinar, the leading pain points in selecting new recruiting technology are:
But, according to the webinar’s panelists, staffing automation technology is now available to overcome these obstacles and meet recruiting companies’ top priorities:
According to Laura Clark, these were also Osborne Appointments’ priorities when one of their biggest clients needed more temps than OA could physically provide with the team they had on hand.
“We recognized really quickly that we needed to identify technology and processes that could make us more efficient. We couldn’t just stand there physically checking temps or taking timesheets. We needed to up our game.”
Instead, they implemented automation technology that allowed them to redeploy their staff to do what only humans can do: get more temporary workers in front of clients quicker.
As a result, OA has doubled its size in a very short time and is looking to do so again within a couple of years. The secret, Clark says, is to “give your employees the opportunity to do what they were hired for,” not waste time on repetitive administrative tasks.
According to the panellists, the leading obstacles to productivity are manual processes (“spreadsheets and whiteboards”) that are time-consuming, do not scale easily, and are highly error-prone. The right automation technology not only eliminates redundant data entry but also speeds up scheduling, timekeeping, invoicing, and payments. It also provides real-time visibility at all worksites, and creates a much better experience for candidates and workers, allowing them to communicate and even clock in and out via their phones.
Of course, an important consideration when implementing recruiting and staffing technology is to make sure that it works with other technology you’re already using. As Michael Zimmerman pointed out, recruiters should avoid creating a “Frankenstack” of incompatible software. A better approach is to use a best-of-breed staffing platform with proven compatibility with other enterprise systems. That way, your IT department will not have to reconcile siloed data or constantly tinker with integrations to tie your software together.
Technology can multiply the effectiveness of your recruitment and staffing team. First, and most important, it can make everyone more efficient. Second, it can provide visibility into each of your clients’ operations and your own. Third, by providing a single source of truth for all transactions, it can give you and your clients the data you need to show the value you deliver – and to increase that value by providing actionable insight for better decision-making.
You’ll find that the efficiencies you gain will deliver benefits both for your clients and for your bottom line.
Click here to watch the entire webinar, “Challenges of adopting tech to manage shift workers.”
For more information or a demonstration to see how JoinedUp’s smart technology can help you deliver the shift-based workforces your clients need faster and with much greater efficiency, visit joinedup.com.