How Not to Manage a Staffing Agency

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Sometimes, the best lessons in life are learned by viewing the example of others.  And sometimes, the example provided by others – from a refusal to admit your mistakes to focusing too heavily on office politics to is a great example of what not to do.  Unfortunately, a staffing agency in Stockholm, Sweden has provided an atrocious example of how not to manage relationships internal or external to your company.

What Happened?

An unnamed Swedish staffing firm and a union were involved in an ongoing dispute.  Both were locked in heated discussions over very serious allegations against the firm –invalid layoffs, salary disputes, and worker pay and holiday leave cuts.  To his great surprise, the union leader was attacked and severely harmed by six gang members, forced at knifepoint to call the staffing company and retract all union demands, and the attackers also demanded €60,000 from the leader himself.  The most outrageous part of the story lies in the fact that Swedish newspapers refused to publish the name of the staffing agency, even though the leader of the criminal gang that carried out the mafia-style attack is biologically related to the owner of the agency!

Lessons Learned

As you can see, this outrageous example shows you several lessons of how not to behave when managing a staffing agency or any type of company.  Here are some I noticed:

  • If you don’t like what someone else is doing, don’t resort to childish and violent behavior.  With the exception of the moron in charge of the staffing agency and a handful of other nincompoops (we all have at least one in our social circles), most people have sense enough to not react in such extreme ways when someone else is doing something they don’t like.  If one of your employees is doing something you don’t like, don’t immediately react with anger.  Sit down and have a conversation about what is happening, reach a resolution, and move on – like adults.
  • Idiotic and immature behavior always has consequences.  Sure, using violence, this guy got the union representative to retract his demands, but it was hardly a victory.  Such use of physical force isn’t the only way to bully people in order to get what you want. If you emotionally or psychologically bully employees at your workplace, they will only respect you to your face – and some may not even do that.

Guess what?  The minute employees who feel bullied find another job, they’re going somewhere else.  You know how costly it is to recruit and train new employees – that’s more costly than hiring someone and holding on to them a while.  The lowlife running this staffing agency received the short-term result he wanted, but now he risks going to prison for several years and losing his business.

  • Admit where you were wrong and be willing to respectfully disagree.  The jerk who ran this company committed overtly wrong acts in the past, but then he never went to right them.  Instead, he tried to get everything his way, until he went way too far.

You have sense enough not to hire thugs to intimidate or bully people.  But, you might be like many others who get caught up in emotional battles and aren’t willing to give in just a little bit.  If you are in a contentious agency battle, admit where you made mistakes in the past, allow the other party to have its own views, and come to a reasonable compromise that makes everyone happy.

By handling tough situations in an upstanding, rather than selfish way, you and everyone impacted by your staffing agency you will win long-term.  The most important thing is to learn and grow as best you can with each experience.

To learn more about how staffing software by Bond US can help you run your agency the right way, request a free demo.

Three Ways To Increase Win Rates

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Easy DIY Remodeling of Your Staffing Software That Improves Your Productivity

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Make your Bond StaffSuite staffing software more personal and productive with easy-to-use DIY user interface configurations.

One of the biggest shows on HGTV is “Property Brothers.” In it, Drew Scott, the real estate agent, and Jonathan Scott, the visionary remodeler, convince the home buyers that they can get their dream home – one that’s really out of their price range — by buying a “fixer-upper” and remodeling it to fit their desires. The home buyers, almost always skeptical to begin with, become true believers as they employ a little sweat equity and a little cash to turn the target home into their personal dream home that fits their lifestyle perfectly.

It’s hard not to identify with the pleasure these homebuyers experience, as I’ve benefited from a number of DIY home remodeling projects over the years. In every case, I wanted to improve the usability, flow, look, and value of my home in harmony with my personal tastes and needs.

New StaffSuite 6.0 is even easier to remodel than a near-perfect home

Like that home you’ve found that is just right for your lifestyle, StaffSuite is designed with you in mind. Right from the moment you open the “door” to StaffSuite 6.0, you’ll find it very familiar; as it follows design standards you already know if you use Microsoft Office. Like in any well-designed home, you will flow easily from one area to another to accomplish your daily tasks related to staffing and recruiting.

But, like any homeowner (or, in this case, staffing software owner), you will probably want to personalize, redecorate, and remodel each room to fit you and your needs. Now you can.

StaffSuite 6.0 now gives professionals like you in high-volume temporary staffing agencies the tools and ability to very easily “remodel” its already intuitive interface. That way you can make it completely personal to your own needs, workflows and uses so that you, too, can enjoy a better, more productive experience.

Here are just a few of the ways that you can remodel StaffSuite 6.0 to fit you:

  • You can easily configure your personal views of your data so that they are specific to your preferences and/or role, such as recruiting, sales, or payroll and billing.
  • You can also configure the new ribbon toolbar – which gives you quick access to Employee, Company, Order, and other data. You can add custom tabs to the ribbon that can include personalized, customizable actions, such as adding a tab for typical recruiting activities.
  • You can customize the Quick Access Toolbar – which gives you one-click access to your own pre-defined common tasks or actions.
  • You can assign keyboard software shortcuts to action commands to reduce clicks or keystrokes.

All of these quickly and easily-done (no coding needed) “remodelings” of StaffSuite 6.0 are just the ticket to help speed you through your work day with less effort. More importantly, all of this remodeling of StaffSuite’s personalized look-and-feel does not in any way impact its flexible, powerful, and reliable performance. Thousands of staffing professionals just like you depend on StaffSuite every day to recruit, assign, pay and manage tens of thousands of temporary employees in every state.

Ah, if only remodeling a home were as easy as remodeling StaffSuite staffing software! If you would like to find out more about the benefits of StaffSuite’s new interface, just CLICK HERE.

If you would like to talk to us about how our solutions can improve your business, CLICK or give us a call at 800-318-4983 today. We’re here to help you succeed.

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Using Staffing Software To Find Specialized Candidates

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You may be one of those staffing firms that specializes its recruiting efforts exclusively in one industry, such as healthcare, accounting, or manufacturing.  While staffing software assists you no matter which industry you serve, keep in mind it can also provide you with specialized help for specialized fields.  Using software to sort through all that candidate big data helps you zone in on very select market segments, and amplifying your results.

How exactly does the right staffing software help?

1. Laser targeting of miniscule market segments.  The job market isn’t the greatest right now, and no matter who is elected to be our next president, odds are our economic problems will take years yet to fix.  If you have a large amount of data available, the right staffing software can help you to laser target nearly any micro targeted niche of candidates.

If you take a macro approach to hiring, you are going to have a difficult time producing results for your clients and your own business.  If you can find success in several micro niches other firms have overlooked, you can be successful, even in this economy.  An upward trend in temporary and contingent staffing has helped other staffing agencies to actually experienced growth since the economic collapse of 2008 – and it’s possible for yours to grow, too.

3. Future market conditions will remain challenging.  The near future will stay challenging because of the current economic conditions, but so will the long-term future.  Did you forget about the baby-boomers?  The current generations getting ready to take their place simply do not have enough numbers to replace all of the baby boomers, and in many sectors, the next generations also aren’t yet experienced enough.

You will have candidates from which to choose, but the challenge will be selecting the right candidate who can do the job.  Fortunately, increasing amounts of data will become available, so if you have the right staffing software in place and the skills to use it, you will be in a better position for long-term success than firms who can’t change along with market conditions.

4. Companies are exploring new talent pools, so help them.  Telecommuting is becoming increasingly easy for knowledge workers.  An eased telecommuting process breaks staffing agencies free of geographical barriers and entering into a larger pool of candidates from which to choose.  Because it can cost nearly the same as an employee’s annual salary to replace that employee, your firm can become a strong player in the market by having the highest success rate of matching qualified candidates to positions fitting their skills well.  However, that does mean you will have to know how to use software to find those needle-in-a-haystack candidates.

Your staffing agency can succeed in any market.  The challenge lies in successfully locating job seekers other firms can’t find and successfully matching them to the right jobs.

To learn more about staffing software by Bond US, request a free demo.

What Staffing Metrics Should Your Agency Focus On?

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Finding the right metrics to focus on in your staffing agency can be quite challenging. Which metrics are the most important and why could be a subject of debate for hours without end.  To complicate the situation, if you adjust your processes or goals based off tracking the wrong staffing metrics, you could end up driving your agency into unfamiliar, alarming and/or potentially hazardous territory.

Without a doubt, some metrics are better than others at providing your agency with big candidate data from which to base more effective decisions.  Let’s explore some of those and why they are more important than others.

Which Staffing Metrics Are Most Important?

Some of the more common metrics analyzed by the typical staffing agency include time-to-fill and cost-per-hire.  These metrics are great for measuring short-term performance.  And, short-term performance is definitely important.  But what about the long-term?  If your agency purely focuses on placing the first candidate with the required qualifications, is that truly a foundation for long-term success?

You might have some initial success and an incredible placement rate, which makes you look good now, but you may lose client companies because your turnover rate stinks!  As such, it’s also critical to track turnover rates to see how well you are actually matching candidates to positions and companies in which they will be successful.

Length of time in a position can indicate a good fit, but some other important metrics you might also want to track to determine the quality of the hiring process at your staffing agency are production and manager satisfaction.  By measuring the employee’s production as compared to his or her peer group, you will have a good idea as to how his or her skills will fit that position.  Manager satisfaction with the employee contains a fair amount of subjective judgment and may or may not reflect the candidate’s performance accurately, but it does provide a good measurement of culture fit.

When You Focus on Long-Term Staffing Success, You Transform Your Agency

Focusing on those short-term metrics has its place when analyzing your company performance, but if you also take the time to focus on long-term metrics, you will take your staffing agency a step above all the rest.  The more tightly an employee’s skills and personality fit a company and its culture over the long haul, the higher the employee’s performance.  The better the employee performs, the better the company performs, and the more business your agency earns by developing a great reputation.

Don’t follow the herd and measure what everyone else does – take a risk by trying something different.  You won’t be disappointed by the results.

To learn more about how staffing software by Bond US can help you effectively track the staffing metrics that most contribute to the success of your agency, request a free demo.

David Creelman Takes On Human Capital Management Challenges

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Most companies would never trust an IT or legal decision made without the consultation of an expert.  So why do these same companies feel comfortable going it alone on human capital management?

As CEO of Creelman Research, David Creelman has contributed his extensive knowledge on human capital management to organizations, consultants and think tanks across the globe.   Recently, he and I worked together on the Investor Metrics Taskforce for the Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM), helping to better illustrate human capital metrics for organizational stakeholders.

In my interview with David below, he shares more about how to overcome the human resources challenges facing organizations and what we really mean when we say human capital ROI:

1.   What do you feel are the biggest changes impacting human capital management over the past five years?

David Creelman:The last five years has seen the unabated continuation of trends that began earlier. The importance of HR has gradually gained recognition and has now reached the point where some boards are paying attention. HR technology has become even more central to the role of HR. Finally, there is a slow professionalization of the function bringing more rigor to decision making.

2.  In regards to the changes impacting human capital management, how well do you feel organizations are adapting?

DC: Most organizations are running quite a few years behind ‘best practice’. They may know they should integrate their systems, but have not got around to it yet. They may know the latest in learning theory, but still have old ineffective courses.

The biggest failing organizations have is that managers, in general, do not seem to recognize they need an expert HR business partner to help them with decisions around talent. They are willing to go it alone on talent decisions in a way that would seem reckless in IT or legal matters. We tend to blame HR for not being business savvy, but the blame lies equally with managers who don’t bother to talk to HR and, if HR is not savvy enough,  don’t demand they get the HR business partners they need.

3.  As economic factors continue to present challenges, all parts of an organization are being held responsible for ROI.  How can organizations best illustrate the ROI of human capital?

DC:First, we need to be careful with the term ROI because if you studied finance it will lead you to think you need to use their pointless equation—forget the equation. What you need to do is prove that human capital investments make sense. That they are likely to produce something of value at an acceptable cost.

Numbers are involved, but it is perhaps 20% numbers, 40% logic and 40% emotion behind any decision.  The other part of this is to always look for the value in what the business gets, not some HR point.  HR projects should be justified in terms of better customer loyalty, fewer errors, winning ad campaigns, a productivity advantage.  Just find out what your business leaders want and justify the return in how it affects that outcome.

4.     What do you feel are the most common mistakes companies make when measuring or reporting on the value of human capital to investors or other stakeholders?

DC: Companies tend to report a fairly random array of feel-good information. They should instead ask what are the key ways human capital drives value creation in the organization and how can they demonstrate how strong they are in each area. Consistently focusing on the few things that matter most is what would help.

5.   With investors asking more challenging questions related to human capital, how can the C-suite better work with their teams to prepare themselves for these questions?

DC: They should proactively take control of the conversation by preparing a human capital report for the board and sharing the most relevant parts with investors. This will lead to a clear minded story and a point of view on what matters.

To learn more about the human resources technology being developed by Bond US, and how this technology can help boost the objectives of both your staffing or recruiting agency and your clients, request a free demo.

Bond is the backbone to our business says Wilkinson Dwyer

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Bond International Software, the global provider of recruitment & human capital management software and services, today announces it has signed an ongoing agreement with Wilkinson Dwyer, a start-up recruitment consultancy that specialises in the tax recruitment marketplace, to deploy Bond Adapt – the specialist portfolio of recruitment software applications.

Wilkinson Dwyer is a start-up recruitment consultancy founded by two directors with approximately 15 years’ combined experience in the tax recruitment marketplace. Based in London, the consultancy specialises in placing candidates within in-house tax vacancies for banks and large cooperates, as well as accounting and legal firms. Its focus is described as a ‘blend of executive search and contingent work’ with its consultants looking to place candidates with salary bandings between £80,000 – £1,000,000.

As a start-up business, Wilkinson Dwyer was keen to sign with a recruitment software provider that offered not only the best customer service in terms of quality of the software, but also with regards to price. After a thorough review of the market, Wilkinson Dwyer found Bond Adapt to be the most cost effective solution compared to its competitors, as well as the most flexible solution – a quality needed to cater for its specific requirements and imminent growth plans.

In preparation for an April 2012 ‘go-live’ date, the recruitment software has already been implemented and will form the foundation of the business. Indeed, Bond Adapt will provide Wilkinson Dwyer’s entire recruitment process infrastructure as the software processes and stores all client, candidate and vacancy details. Furthermore, Wilkinson Dwyer will use functionality within Bond Adapt to manage back-office processes, such as invoice generation and calendar management. The recruitment software – hosted by Bond and accessed online by the agency – will provide Wilkinson Dwyer’s consultants with remote functionality, an essential requirement for allowing ‘recruitment on the move’. Furthermore, Wilkinson Dywer will be taking advantage of Bond Adapt’s LinkedIn integration service to proactively export data onto its database to create more comprehensive candidate profiles.

Commenting on the cost effectiveness of its recruitment solution from Bond Adapt, Thomas Wilkinson, Director, Wilkinson Dwyer, comments, “As a start-up recruitment consultancy, the driving force for us was price and as a consequence, we were expecting to have to sacrifice on quality. We were keen to implement the very best software within our budget and, after thoroughly researching the market, we found Bond to come in well below its competitors in terms of price and yet in many ways far ahead in functionality. Furthermore, the team from Bond was very flexible in the way that the recruitment system was packaged up for us – indeed, we believe Bond Adapt met our specific business requirements entirely, predominantly because they paid attention to our precise situation and needs.”

Wilkinson continues, “We operate in a candidate-short market where high calibre tax candidates are very often difficult to source and yet demand is high. This means we absolutely must have immediate access to candidate and vacancy information as quickly as possible. We are entirely confident that in Bond Adapt, we are more than adequately equipped – in a single, easily affordable package, we can now manage all our back-office activity and stay ahead in the ‘CV race’. In short, we now have the ideal backbone for our business.”

Tim Richards, Managing Director, Bond International Software UK, concludes “Bond prides itself on its flexibility of service, tailoring packages to the individual needs of each customer. Whether it be a multinational corporate, or a start-up such as Wilkinson Dwyer, we work closely with each customer to establish their needs and provide a package that best suits their requirements. It is this commitment to service and adaptability that means the business is continuing to enjoy dramatic success in the industry.”

Bond Sponsors The Global Recruiter’s First Asia Pac Recruitment Summit

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GR Asia Pac 200x200Bond International Software, the global provider of recruitment & human capital management software & services, today announces its sponsorship of The Global Recruiter’s first Asia Pacific Recruitment Summit, “Brave New World”.

The summit will be held at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, on the 5th and 6th September 2012, uniting the recruitment industry in and around Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Japan and the other main Asia Pacific jurisdictions. These hubs are among the fastest growing recruitment marketplaces in the world and The Global Recruiter’s summit provides a unique opportunity for recruitment professionals in the area to share expertise and experience.

The two-day summit includes plenary sessions, masterclasses and a selection of seminar tracks, while simultaneously providing the opportunity to investigate supportive products and services.

Bond’s sponsorship of the event demonstrates its ongoing commitment to supporting business growth in this region. Indeed, in the past 12 months alone, Bond has seen a 24% revenue increase across Asia Pacific, following its expanding network of local offices since opening its first in Hong Kong in 2006, and the development and localisation of its benchmark recruitment software – Bond Adapt – for the Asian market.

Bond Adapt is already in wide use globally and this latest version has been most recently awarded “Highly Commended” for Best Innovation in The Asia Pacific Global Recruiter Industry Awards 2012, principally due to its localisation, scalability, platform independence and inherent flexibility. Bond will showcase the new version of Bond Adapt at the summit, which is available in Japanese, Chinese and Korean and has been specifically tailored for the legislative requirements of  local markets – a first for global recruitment software.

Steve Russell, CEO, Bond International Software, comments, “The Global Recruiter is providing enormous support to the AsiaPAC recruitment market by facilitating the development of connections and networks of shared knowledge that are rapidly developing.. Having been involved in the global recruitment industry for nearly four decades and being established in the Asia Pacific region for many years now, we welcome the opportunity to meet leading firms and discuss their immediate needs and ambitions.”