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 

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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