The first person who needs to answer this question in every staffing organization is the owner operator.  Here are some related questions:

• Is your staffing firm producing value in the marketplace?
• More specifically, are you creating value for your clients?
• Can you define what that value is and is it measurable?

By its nature a business is an economic entity and is sustained only as long as it makes economic sense to itself and its client-base.

Create value to reverse falling margins and other negative staffing industry trends

Over the last 20 years, one of the most significant trends in the staffing industry has been the shift from being a small supplemental workforce agent to being embraced as a key component to businesses’ workforce strategy.  The fallout is the relegation of staffing to procurement due to the increased spend in dollars each year.  Many of our clients who use our staffing software deal with procurement people in contract renewal or bid processes.  They have discovered that the primary goal of the typical procurement professional is to diminish the true value of the staffing service so they can achieve the lowest per unit cost.

It’s nothing new but this complaint of many staffing operators is still fresh: my peers and competitors are not helping the situation by low balling contracts and further diminishing the perceived value of the staffing product.  Therefore, making the economics of doing business even more challenging.

A number of staffing firms have successfully pushed back against these staffing industry trends by moving up the value chain in their clients’ organizations.  Often these firms have focused on niche markets and developed a level of expertise elevating them above the procurement office into the operational areas of the firm where managers are interested in outcomes such as performance and production product quality.  As these staffing operators do the hard work to be embedded as a value-added solution into their clients’ business processes they achieve such profitable results as:

• Better margins
• Consulting fees
• Long term relationships
• Barriers to competition

Email me to share ways you’ve fought falling margins by adding value to your staffing services?

Contact us to discuss how we’ve helped staffing companies improve their margins and move up the value-chain in their clients’ organizations with our staffing software.

Dave Reiss
Founder and CEO
Applied Systems Technology
845-534-7100 X1102
dave@astusa.com
Connect with me on:

• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dave-reiss/4/37b/218
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/dave_ast

• Feet up on the furniture.
• Brew in one hand.
• The clicker in the other.
• And his favorite sports team flashing on the TV.

I was thinking about buying boxer shorts for my four-legged little buddy, so the two of us could sit on the couch like a couple of bums enjoying the reprieve from house hold duties. But to my surprise, with my wife Jane away for the weekend with two of her girlfriends, having sole responsibility for the house, launched me into some type of testosterone-fueled nesting frenzy.

The Power of Ownership - A Simple Lesson I Learned at Home For the Temporary Staffing Industry

I was consumed with keeping clutter away, counters cleaned, and our newly refinished floors washed and polished. I vigilantly monitored the garbage levels in the kitchen, continuously ran recyclables to the outside bin, planned meals two or tree days ahead of time, and the real kicker – planning my social schedule a few days out; a task normally efficiently taken care of by Jane.

Initially, I was confused by my level of energy and enthusiasm for these household tasks. But after pondering my new found zeal, the “power of ownership” came to mind. With Jane gone, the wellbeing of the house, the dog, and the cat was totally on my shoulders, and I thoroughly enjoyed stepping up to the plate assigning my signature and pride to the jobs at hand – the power of ownership at work.

My wife is an awesome woman. She has a pit bull’s grip on so many areas of our life at work and home and it truly boggles my mind how well she does it all. The way her masters in fine arts has translated into a mastery of details completely befuddles me. However, her being away created a vacuum in areas that I was surprisingly willing and able to fill.

The Power of Ownership and the Temporary Staffing Industry

A lot of staffing firms are stuck because of people – really good people that are so good at what they do that no one wants to step into their areas of responsibility and give it a crack. For the smaller firms in the temporary staffing industry to move from an entrepreneurial model to a highly leveraged strategic design, staffing executives and professionals from the top down need to create power vacuums in their companies that other people can fill. There is an art and science to doing this intentionally. Staffing managers that learn to let go and empower their employees infuse seismic amounts of new energy into their staffing firms.

Email me ways you’ve choreographed empowerment in your organization – either personally or across the organization – to share in a future blog post with the Mad Staffing readers.

Contact us to discuss how we can support you in your efforts to empower staffing managers and professionals with AST’s staffing software.

Dave Reiss
Founder and CEO
Applied Systems Technology
845-534-7100 X1102
dave@astusa.com
Connect with me on:

• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dave-reiss/4/37b/218
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/dave_ast

I recently finished crunching the statistics and seeing if there are any interesting staffing industry trends to report on.  18 people responded to the corporate culture survey. Here are the results and my “mad thoughts”:

• Two most common characteristics were Client Centric and Collaborative:  72 % percent of the respondents described their culture with these qualities.  For many staffing companies the business of order fulfillment is a team sport with staffers collaborating often in a bullpen environment – exchanging as much information dynamically as possible.
• Next two most popular characteristics were Efficient and Self-improving: 61 % described themselves this way.  Initially we were a little surprised many of you chose efficient probably because most staffing companies are running very lean at this time based on the financial stress caused by the economy over the past two years.  The caution we would put out there is to scrutinize internal processes so that the organization can sustain or improve efficiencies as the economy improves.  Challenging economic times help identify and weed out complacent behavior while good times often hide inefficiencies; check out Junk Your Staffing Agency’s Clunkers – Start a New Staffing Industry Trend!
• Competitive, nurturing, and innovative were identified by 55% of the respondents.  It is significant to note that only about one half of the respondents described their cultures as competitive.  The readers of Mad Staffing might want to take this as a marker to stop and evaluate their own organization to see how they fit into this category since it is one of the key organizational drivers that affects growth.  What is also interesting is that 6 of the respondents characterized their cultures as both competitive and nurturing which would indicate that these two qualities are not incompatible in the same company.
• 44% of you identified with High Performing and Creative:  It is not surprising that they would come in very close to the categories of innovative and competitive.  It is noteworthy that in all instances except for one, high performing accompanied competitive.  I would hope that this would further encourage the readers of AST’s Mad Staffing blog to evaluate the competitive nature of their organizations.
• 33% of you classified your organizations as Disciplined and Frugal:  The low percentage on discipline did not surprise us.  Our observations have been that the majority of staffing organizations are not heavily process oriented.  In less stressful economic times, staffing companies have been able to make decent to very good profits largely on entrepreneurial efforts and management.   Mad Staffing believes that a significant opportunity for financial growth will be achieved by embracing process improvement – in essence stream lining and automating processes to free-up human capital for more value added client-focused work.  Staffing organizations moving in this direction will have to embrace a more disciplined approach to operations.  Staffing companies will have to attack the below the line expenses, the largest being human capital to make up for margin pressure which is probably going to be around for a long time.
• The last four categories were Critical at 22%, Wasteful at 11%, and Frustrating and Paralyzed at 5%.  A few observations regarding these numbers:  First, we are happy to see that according to these statistics, most of the people in the industry seem to be relatively positive with only a few feeling that they are working in paralyzed and frustrating environments.  The one anomaly that we would like to investigate further is the discrepancy between the number of organizations that would not describe themselves as disciplined and frugal (which is fairly high at almost 70%) and the number that would describe themselves as wasteful (which is only 11%).  One possible explanation is that a non-process oriented businesses. which often characterizes a staffing firm, compared with a manufacturing company, would not necessarily consider a lack of discipline wasteful.

Feel free to email dave@astusa.com to let me know what you think of the trends, my analysis, and what your explanations and thoughts are about these staffing industry statistics. 

Also, contact us if you are interested in talking to us about ways we can help you save and make money with technology after 25 years of developing and implementing staffing software systems.

Dave Reiss
CEO and Founder
Applied Systems Technology 

Don’t forget to connect with me on:

• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dave-reiss/4/37b/218
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/appliedsystech 

The town dump is also the public works garage. While emptying the leaves out of my Toyota 4Runner, a long line of the town employees’ pick-up trucks caught my eye and reminded me of the power of culture on human behavior. It taught me a powerful lesson.

Here are the three things grabbed my attention:

• All of the public works employees drove trucks.
• Almost all of them seem to be excited about Dodge trucks.
• And they all seemed to enjoy backing their trucks into their parking spots.

Interesting behavior- either they all discussed the fastest way to get out of dodge as the clock hits 4:00 pm, or there is some other less conspicuous agent at work.

This is a simple but powerful picture of the effect that peers have on our behavior in the workplace – the power of culture.

The funny thing is that if their employer insisted they buy Dodge trucks and park them as shown in the picture…the bossman might end up in the leaf pile (I’ve seen these guys; they’re no sissies). If there wasn’t a physical reaction, there would certainly be complaints of micro management and “Who the [blank] are you to tell me what to drive and how to park!”

I’m not sure how long it actually took for this fleet of vehicles to fall into line, but I am certain that it was voluntary, and that each of the participants came to what they thought were strong individualistic conclusions about the best dang vehicle to drive, and the best direction to park them in. The fact is that our peers in the staffing industry have a profound influence and can change how we behave for better or worse – changes we are barely conscious of. This is the awesome power of culture.

What type of culture is driving the undercurrents of behavior in your staffing firm?

Contact us about how we can help you develop the most efficient processes and support you in creating a more high performing culture within your staffing firm with your staffing software and technology.

• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dave-reiss/4/37b/218
• Twitter: appliedsystech
• Email: dave@astusa.com

My wife says that I am the risk taker in the in the house.  She’s probably right since I have always been drawn to the adventures of single track mountain biking and glade skiing.  Some only see the danger in going off the main road or trails, but more often than not I have found undiscovered treasures in those remote places.  So here ‘s a question; are there some remote places that you need to go to today to find treasures for your staffing business?

Bucking staffing industry trends on the road less traveled

Here are some suggestions on how to find treasures for you and your staffing agency in remote places:

1. Get out of the traffic for a few hours.
   Like most of you, I developed the habit (It has almost become an obsession) of checking my e-mails first thing in the morning.  E-mail is like being in traffic for me – lots of things flying by, all vying for my attention.  The addictive part of my personality is drawn to this activity because it feels like work and scratches that itchy desire to accomplish something.  Recently, I dared to ask myself on a relative scale how important is looking at e-mail compared to other activities I could be doing for my staffing software business? 
2. Get to higher altitudes.
   I have the good fortune of having some strong operational people working for my staffing software company.  That good fortune would be a waste if I did not remove myself from operational activities so that I could see the big picture.  Douglas Macarthur was somewhat imperial in his approach as a general – he is arguably one of the greatest generals in the history of the United States and was able to turn the tide on the Japanese during the second world war. He went to the higher altitudes where he conceived of the leap frog strategy that left the Japanese wasting their resources on Islands that the pacific forces ignored under Macarthur’s direction.  Guides always go to the highest elevations so they can choose the best routes for the journey.
   We too can carve out time to step back and look at the current condition of our staffing businesses, consider staffing industry trends along with those of our client’s industries – basically make the time to do a good ol’ SWAT analysis!

   Taking my staffing software company off the beaten track

3. Listen to Simon and Garfunkel and the sounds of silence.
   I have no idea what this wonderful singing duo was talking about, but I do know that you see and hear important things when you get away from all the noise.  Sometimes success, I mean the really important things that make a difference, are found in a number of subtle ripples – in whispers or low tones.  If we are not listening deeply, we miss the whispers and with them some of the greatest opportunities to advance our businesses.  These ripples can be in subtle things that prospects and clients are or even worse are not saying, or in conversations revealing certain staffing industry trends.  They could be in observations that our employees have made that we do not give enough weight to. 

This week I was able to identify a few initiatives that our team believes will improve our staffing software, our client’s ROI, and make a significant difference in our success over the next two years.  I almost missed the opportunity because of natural impulse of staying busy.  Comment on the blog to share with us some great things that you have been able to accomplish by bucking staffing industry trends and taking the road less traveled.