• i3-Blog | Staffing

There is a clear correlation between employees’ quality and their company’s growth. Every business plan is as good as its execution, and every execution is as good as the people who will helm it. What it crystal clearly implies is that no company is better than the worth or quality of its staff. It doesn’t matter how grand the vision of the management’s eye is. It will metamorphose into reality through the hands of its employees. It then unfolds in front of us why the term capital usually acts as a suffix to the term human and 52% of respondents have considered staffing service activity as the most important HR function.
However, the walk of staffing is not without limps. It is grappling with the problems which have been there since time immemorial as well as with the unique problems which are the result of rapidly evolving business contours. And, as explained earlier, timely nipping them in the bud can have a positive impact on the sales funnel of any company. To assist you in this, we have listed down some of the most common and detrimental staffing woes along with their tangible solutions.

1) Staffing Compliance with Laws and Regulations:

Geographical boundaries are becoming more and more porous with the enhanced speed of globalization. It’s now a common norm for companies to have a cross-continental presence. It is forcing companies to hire local talent. But the catch is, different countries have different employment laws. Check out condos for sale in downtown san diego. Much to the chagrin of companies, they keep changing. That’s why it’s a struggle for businesses to keep abreast with this ever-changing chain of laws. Under no circumstances, companies can afford to brush them off. Doing so directly means audits, lawsuits, jail-terms, and possibly even the premature demise of your company.

Solution:

It may sound mundane, but the only way out here is to stay updated with the employment laws of your as well other countries in which you may wish to operate. You can tie-up with a few law firms, or have an in-house legal expert who can raise alarm bells when probable dangers are in sight. Note that there are regulations on everything from hiring practices, to wage payment, to workplace safety. To begin with, go through the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment Law Guide.

2) Wrong Hire:

Though it’s a common expectation that companies with clear goals and strategies will go error-free while selecting the right candidates, that’s far from the truth. The Harvard Business Review found that up to 80% of employee turnovers were due to bad hiring choices. Generally, it results due to mismatched expectations, ambiguous job descriptions, lack of enough background check, and overestimating the quality of a candidate in question. A company is left with no option but to send him back as he is no good-fit. Note that it is forcing a company to re-activate its hiring activity from the scratch. And it can put a hole into its pocket. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that it can cost an average of one-third of a new hire’s salary to replace them. SRHM puts the price tag of a failed hire at up to five times an employee’s salary.

Solution:

It’s always better to hand over tasks to staffing services specialists who know their work like the back of their hands. Staffing agencies, who have seen enough ebbs and flows of the staffing terrain, can judge instinctively the compatibility of the candidate with any given job role. You can dot down what you would like to see in potential candidates and hand it over to staffing veterans. Besides, staffing service agencies have access to larger networks than internal recruiters. This infinitely ups the possibility of finding a perfect candidate- the ultimate goal of any staffing endeavor.

3) Managing Seasonal Workload Fluctuations:

ACertain businesses are structured in such a way that they have busy seasons where employees are expected to push harder to meet the business goals. To achieve them, sometimes you need more human resources. Generally, most of the businesses respond to it by roping in part-time employees. It scores low on a fiscal sense, as even they are working as part-timers, they are still the permanent ones. You may not need them once the season dies down. In the long run, they can become liabilities.

Solution:

The most rational solution to this too-real problem is to rethink the idea of having permanent employees- at least for few departments and functionalities. Bringing in the idea of temporary or contract employment can beef up staffing levels during the crunch time. It will cut down the overhead costs like WSIB premiums, overtime pay, and increased risk of higher claims costs in the event of a permanent employee injury.

4) Churn Out:

Churn out is easily the most detrimental spot of bother by some huge margin. What makes it worse is it hampers companies in two ways. First, it robs you of the quality employees. Second, it may impose an astronomical cost. Note that it has hard expenses, such as paying for job postings and advertisements to recruit people again. But its soft expenses can damage companies with equal ferocity, as factors like lowered productivity, overworked remaining staff, training cost for replacement workers, lost knowledge sneak in whenever good talent walks out the door.

Solution:

To be very honest, it’s not very wise to look at the turnover problem only through the prism of staffing. The reasons behind employees’ bidding adieus to companies can be multi-faceted. Maybe someone is offering them a much higher package. They may have to relocate due to some personal reasons; or, they may not be happy with the overall work culture, facilities, and opportunities that their current organizations are offering. In that case, it needs an overhaul of a company structure.
However, from HR and staffing side, it’s possible to pin down the most probable reasons of resignations. Exit interviews can be supremely effective in achieving this feat, as you can gather enough data and reasons behind most of the departures. Based on these nuggets of information, you can offer those things to employees that attract them at the time of hiring itself. Besides, as it uncovers issues that can be addressed to improve the work environment, it will automatically reduce the turnover rate.

In A Nutshell:

The paradigm shift in the staffing domain is as clear as day. Earlier, it used to begin with the screening of candidates and end with their exits. Now companies are trying to micro-analyze why people leave them by collecting the granular data. They are using it to nullify reasons of their exits by making changes in the overall structure and policies of companies. The aim is to retain good employees as much as possible to negate the need for constant recruitment. Clearly, the approach to staffing is becoming more proactive. Even after considering all the problems that we have discussed, it’s still a move in a right direction. Because staffing service is generally a moving target which is hard to hit!