The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented strains on the resources of many businesses, especially their human resource departments. In addition to the routine HR responsibilities, you now have to grapple with maintaining a safe workplace, integrating in-person personnel with employees working from home, and you must do all of this amid an uncertain economic environment.
Partnering with a leading staffing agency or strengthening your relationship with your current firm at a time like this can reduce these strains through proactive workforce planning. Here are five critical ways in which your staffing agency can help you during this crisis:
- Gain Instant Flexibility and Scalability
As an employer, you may not have great visibility into the current DFW market of highly skilled candidates. For most, it’s quite a different set of circumstances than what we have ever seen before. Many qualified candidates have informal agreements with current and prior employers who want to retain or bring back their services, but are struggling to find their footing in this environment. What this means is that when you invest in hiring full-time employees now, some may return to their previous employers.
On the other hand, you may not want to bring in permanent employees; you may need the flexibility of hiring talent with the skills you need, when you need it, without long-term obligations. It takes a deep network to uncover strong talent interested in short-term employment right now, as many of the best sidelined workers have the luxury of waiting until the pandemic subsides, given the possibility of returning to their former employers and the strong unemployment benefits now available.
There are yet two more aspects to this scalability you may not have considered: First, if your company is marketing services to prospects and clients, working with a staffing firm enables you to market a full slate of capabilities. Knowing that you have a partner in staffing gives you that confidence to move ahead aggressively with your marketing plans, while your competitors miss out on the same opportunities. Second, you want to preserve the ability to scale back if a slowdown should occur, so you need a more flexible workforce during these conditions.
- Save Time and Money
Hiring contractors and freelancers, rather than full-time permanent workers enables you to spend less on payroll, benefits, and personnel administrative costs. This improves your cash flow at a time when the economy and your industry could go in any conceivable short-term direction.
Your staffing firm takes responsibility for all employment taxes and workers’ compensation, as well, which further reduces time and expense.
- Bring in Pre-Vetted Candidates
An agency with decades of experience and a deep network in DFW has access to a deep pool of hidden talent. In the case of Imprimis, we have hundreds of workers we have placed in assignments for many years, and you can bring them on with confidence in their ability to hit the ground running and execute to expectations. You can do this without exhausting HR resources and spending countless hours per week poring over resumes, only to find candidates that do not live up to what appears on paper.
- Gain Access to Freelance Talent
The gig economy has changed the nature of work for many people. About 36% of US workers are now freelancing, and at the current rate, more than 50% of the US workforce will participate in it by 2027. Given the nature of freelance work, it is much more difficult and time consuming to discern quality freelance talent from those that are either skating by or are not serious about their careers. Imprimis Group has a deep network of freelance talent across our industries that we have evaluated for years. We know their specific skills and strengths, and which clients and cultures are best suited to their work styles.
- Avoid Overtime Pay and Overworked Employees
If you’re like many DFW organizations, your workloads are fluctuating unpredictably of late. As a result, you may be short-staffed at times or you may have to pay workers overtime, resulting in overworked, unhappy, and burnt out workers. This isn’t just a momentary predicament; today’s unsatisfied employees are going to be much harder to retain when the pandemic subsides and the economic outlook improves.
When managing unexpected and unpredictable human resource demands, a professional staffing firm is your best ally. There hasn’t been a time since arguably the Great Depression when organizations have needed this partnership more than they do during COVID-19.