Recently, went down to Florida to do onsite training at Rita Staffing, a 37 year-young Lakeland-based full-service recruitment and placement firm, that is going live on the most recent version of our Persona enterprise-wide staffing software.

Training recruiters on AST's Persona staffing software in computer lab

Over the course of two-days, a colleague and me trained recruiters, salespeople, and back office staff.  This was one of the more successful training trips I’ve been a part of -  a large part because of the preparation work that Tiffany Hash, their Director of Technology, and Dustin Shay, Account Manager, did to ready the staff for the technology change.

Here are some things they did that helped make their transition to our latest staffing software as smooth as possible:

• Got the staff into the software and practicing before the training.
• Prepared cheat sheets and custom documentation/binders for the staff.
• Took the training offsite to a professional computer lab.
• Tiffany and Dustin along with the rest of the leadership at the staffing company maintained an enthusiastic attitude about the upgrade, which helped get buy-in from the rest of the staff.

Custom Staffing Software User Manual

Cheet Sheat for Types of Tasks Users Will Schedule in AST's Staffing Software

“Live week went so smooth – any issues we had were very minor.  Back office experienced no issues the first day of processing checks and only minor issues during the first run of invoices.  Front office was a bit more of an adjustment but the multiple training sessions we had prior to conversion as well as the on-site training with AST helped.  After the on-site session with AST, all front office staff ran both PlaceMate (the previous revision of the staffing software they were running on) and Persona – anything they documented in PlaceMate, they duplicated in Persona to familiarize themselves more with the new system.  Joe (the main AST systems consultant on the project) has been beyond awesome throughout the whole process – he was so helpful, prompt, and patient with any request we had.  The only thing I would probably change would be doing the conversion sooner – previous conversions haven’t been as pleasant so I was slightly nervous about the major change.  This conversion was wonderful!!!”

Wow, not sure if I’ve ever heard the words “conversion” and “wonderful” in the same sentence!  But with the right combination of preparation, positive leadership, and staff buy-in, Rita Staffing has proved that a wonderful staffing software conversion is truly possible.

What’s worked for you and what hasn’t in past software implementations – I’d love to hear your success stories, and sympathize with you over any “less-than-smooth” stories?  Feel free to email me, or contact us to learn more about how we’re helping staffing firms make and save money through the implementation of our fully integrated front and back office staffing software.

Everett Reiss
Director of Marketing and Communications
Applied Systems Technology
845-534-7100 X1102
ev@astusa.com
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An Easy Macro that Combines Multiple Excel Workbooks from Your Staffing Software into One Excel Workbook

Once you are able to get the reports you need in Excel from your staffing software, you may find yourself copying data or sheets from multiple Excel workbooks into one workbook.  Or perhaps you have Excel workbooks from other sources that you’d like to quickly and easily combine into one workbook.

In a recent situation, a client of ours has over 10 different financial statements setup in our system – one for each profit center along with a summary statement.  Through our system, they are able to export one, two, or all ten financial statements into Excel. However, each financial statement is outputted to a separate file, so they were manually copying the worksheets into one workbook. This became time-consuming since there are numerous iterations of their financials each month.

So they asked me to find a solution.  Here’s what I found: Watch the video above to see how you can easily add a macro to your Excel workbook that quickly combines multiple workbooks into one Excel Workbook.

Google Some Other Macros to Slap onto Repetitive Time-Consuming Office Tasks

Think of some other time-consuming tasks that you regularly do in Microsoft Office products.  Chances are you can automate some part of the process with macros.  To find the solution I demonstrated above, I simply googled “combine multiple workbooks into one workbook” and found my answer in the fourth result, VBA Express: Excel – Combine All Workbooks From One Folder.

I hope this saves you some time, and inspires you to experiment with some other macros.  Remember, if you think there’s a way to save time and money by doing something faster, then there probably is!

Contact us to discuss the reporting features or any other aspect regarding our staffing software solutions.  Also, feel free to email me if you’re a staffing executive or professional with further questions about macros in Excel.

Everett Reiss

One thing you can count on to lead staffing industry trends is increased unemployment rates.  Staffing businesses in at least 35 states will see an increase in unemployment insurance taxes this year.  17 states have either decided or are close to raising either their SUTA wage bases or tax rates to help restore their almost non-existent state trust funds. 

CNNMoney.com’s article Unemployment Taxes Slam Businesses reports that the median increase will be 27.5%; staffing companies in states like Texas will see their state payroll taxes per employee nearly triple from $23.40 to $64.80; those in Florida, over tenfold from $8.40 to $100.30; and the New Jersey Business & Industry Association reports that NJ businesses could get hit with an additional $400 per employee.  While lawmakers are trying to figure out how to soften the blow these hikes have on businesses, an increase in employer unemployment taxes appears to be a long term staffing industry trend – see recent Philly Inquirer article on Dems Call for Compromise on NJ Unemployment Fund.  Also, checkout our Staffing Industry Employment and Unemployment News Feed.

One easy way to reduce your unemployment costs is to place people who have already hit their SUTA limit for the year. 

Check out this math, which shows how much can be added to your staffing firm’s bottom line if your recruiters give extra consideration to candidates who have already hit their SUTA caps for the year:

For example, candidate “A” who hasn’t hit their SUTA cap is placed on a job along with candidate “B” who has reached the SUTA limit for the year.  If both candidates are earning $350/week in a state with an unemployment rate of 5%, then you’re saving $17.50/week on candidate “B” who’s hit the SUTA cap.  If 150 placements in that week with similar pay could be “steered” towards candidates with no SUTA burden, then that translates into $2,625/week or $136,500/year in savings.  Being more conservative, realizing just 30% of the above savings adds over $40K to your bottom line!

In order to make this happen, you’ll need to:

• Make a candidate’s SUTA taxable year-to-date income easily accessible to your recruiters.
• Coach recruiters on how to access such information and use it in their decision-making process.
• Incentify the behavior of looking at a candidate’s SUTA taxable year-to-date income by making commissions based on a gross margin calculation that includes actual employer SUTA costs for an assignment.

You’ll want to harness the power of your staffing software  to make it especially easy for your recruiters to see where a candidate is at with their SUTA taxable income for the year and to do the commissions calculations and reporting.  For example, in our staffing software, we publish each candidate’s SUTA limit right to the hit list that a recruiter generates when searching for candidates to place on a job:

Candidate hit list in AST's Persona Staffing Software shows who's hit the SUTA limit

In this example, the candidate hit list is showing that Deborah Frankel is the only candidate that has already reached the SUTA limit for the year.  While this doesn’t mean that placing Frankel is a no-brainer – there are many other factors as to whether this person is a good fit, recruiters should definitely bring this information into consideration when deciding who to place on the job, and it helps when they understand how making placements with no SUTA costs attached will lead to higher commissions for them.

Contact us to talk to us about additional ways you can be using staffing software to streamline your processes and cut costs relating to unemployment, workers compensation, and sales.  Also, comment on this blog or email me at ev@astusa.com to tell us what other steps are you taking to reduce your unemployment costs?  I’d love to share them with our readers in a future blog post. 

While I can’t say we had an emergency “snowicane” protocol established, we had progressively put things in place that helped us act quickly to:
#1 Notify our clients in the staffing industry of our situation.
#2 And offer an alternate way to get support for our staffing software.

Here are three things our staffing software firm had in place that you can easily do to prepare your staffing company for some type of natural disaster or act of God that renders your office temporarily inoperable. �

1. Record your staff’s cell phone #s: At the very least, two or three of your office’s top decision-makers should have everyone’s cell phone numbers programmed into their phones and on hard copy hanging up at their homes. If the phone lines go down, cell phones are typically the best way to get in touch with the staff and tell them what’s going on and what the plan is.
2. Keep your client email database in an online email application: If the power goes out at your main office where your servers are housed, then you’ll have no access to your company email or to any contacts that are on those servers. Therefore, having a company Gmail account or other free online email service is a simple way to give your clients an alternative way to get in touch with your staffing company. However, if you send out a mass email to your client database notifying them of your situation through your free email account, your email may be flagged as spam. Therefore, I suggest you have your client email database loaded into an online email service like Constant Contact or Mail Chimp, through which you can send out mass emails that are spam compliant. Make sure two to three people know how to access and use the mail service and it would be a good idea to have an “emergency” email notification template setup and ready to be modified and sent out.
3. Make sure there’s a clear distribution of responsibility: This makes things a whole lot simpler once the unexpected strikes. Here are the main responsibilities that should be doled out ahead of time:

• Decision-making regarding how your staffing company is going to react to the current situation.
• Phone calls to staff letting them know what is going on.
• Email to clients and candidates notifying them of your situation and how to best get in contact with your company.
• Monitoring and responding the available support-channels for your clients and candidates to get help.

Being able to support your candidates and clients through extenuating circumstances goes a long way in their eyes. After sending an email through Constant Contact to our client-base notifying them our office was down and to email our Gmail account as an alternate way to get support, I received numerous emails (once my power came back on and our servers were restored) of appreciation for our commitment to keep support going. Also, Frank Salustro, owner of a temporary staffing firm in Jamaica, NY, was extremely grateful that he was able to get a hold of Chantel, the manager of our support department and one of the few people who had power in our county. She helped him print payroll checks from our staffing software after he had run into a snag.

To help other staffing firms prepare to support their clients and candidates through the unexpected, email me, ev@astusa.com, some other ideas you have and may have put into practice.  If you are interested in talking to us about our staffing software, go to our Contact Us page.

 Remember that taking these simple steps ahead of time will go along way with your clients and candidates and make your company stand out in the staffing industry when it matters.

Everett Reiss
Project & Account Management and Internet Marketing
Applied Systems Technology
845-534-7100 X1102
ev@astusa.com
Connect with me on: