Regardless of whether your business is booming or has faced adversity as of late, there’s always room for improvement. Even well-managed ventures have ups and downs, weaker aspects, and room for process revamp or departmental improvement. That’s just part of owning a company. Each business has unique specifics, but one aspect that can benefit from extra assistance is the hiring process.
Sourcing, screening, training, and interviewing new hires can be time-consuming, inefficient, and costly. Hiring missteps can have severe consequences on your bottom line. This leads to increased costs and potential hiring mistakes, which can have disastrous consequences for your company. Luckily, there are ways you can streamline this a bit more and relieve some of the stress on your part.
Outsourcing and partnering up with outside help immediately comes to mind. Now’s the time to use a staffing firm. Not quite convinced? Here’s a little insight into what services staffing firms can offer you and why making use of them is so critical.
A New Type of Try Before You Buy
The services offered by staffing firms are reasonably varied, potentially helping your business in everything from crafting job descriptions, human resource consultancy, sharing knowledge of staffing/employment laws, and more. Possibly the most important and sought-after service they provide is the sourcing of short-term workers and temp-to-hire job candidates.
Those unfamiliar with the latter situation may not be aware that a temp-for-hire arrangement involves hiring a worker on a conditional basis. By setting up a short-term contract, the company ensures guaranteed work for a specific duration. At the contract’s end, a full-time, permanent position may be offered based on performance. This serves as a trial period to assess the employee’s fit with the job and company culture.
It may sound like an unusual position to find oneself in, but it offers benefits to both the business as a whole and the employee on the other side of the table. The benefit to businesses would be saving precious resources and time on wrong hires as it allows them to build a more intentional, positive working environment. The employees get something out of it, too. They can use this trial period to discover whether they’ll truly be happy in their position or if they’re better off trying their luck elsewhere. A smart choice all around, which goes to show why temp-to-hire is one of staffing firms’ most beloved services.
The Cost of Good Business
Everyone loves a trial period, and it’s no different when it comes to temp-to-hire employees. Despite how cautious you are regarding your hires; caution alone is admittedly not enough to warrant outsourcing a huge chunk of your business’ operations. It’s a big step, and one that warrants a good deal of consideration before jumping the gun. However, reduced costs and unemployment claims help sweeten the deal and make relying on a staffing firm far more attractive.
How does that work? It all starts with the reality that outsourcing is frequently the cheaper option than in-house, regardless of your industry or niche. Since temporary hires and staff are employed through the staffing firm rather than your own business, you do not necessarily have to provide benefits or worry about overtime if you don’t want to. The traditional 40 hour-long work weeks aren’t gospel here, and you can instead call upon employees as needed. This significantly reduces spending from you. It turns out that the cost of good business doesn’t have to be all that high.
Savings on benefits and overtime can add up to big numbers, but there’s also another cost to consider, one that staffing firms also make a non-issue: unemployment costs. Since temporary hires aren’t employed through you, you don’t need to be concerned about now-past employees filing for unemployment. No unemployment claims mean no staff is needed to deal with those claims. This is only compounded in the best of ways, making for far more agreeable hiring costs.
Poor Hire Choices No More
Let’s be completely honest. Every business has had a few wobbles in the employment department. There are always people who seem fantastic on paper but end up not putting it all into practice. There are also plenty of folks who don’t end up meshing well with the company’s requirements, working hours, company culture, or mission, even if they seemed like a natural fit at the beginning. A few new hires might have even managed to fly under the radar a bit, underqualified for the position only for it to have consequences later down the line. It happens. Don’t beat yourself up over it too much.
This is a significant issue, particularly if it has happened more than once or twice. It’s a signal that there might be miscommunication or misunderstanding between hiring parties. Furthermore, it spells disaster for your company bank account. There are some severe costs related to poor hiring choices. In fact, according to the good people at the US Department of Labor, the average cost of one of these bad hires is 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings. That can take weeks to correct. Included in this is lost productivity, damaged reputation, and decreased morale to contend with on top of it all.
Enter staffing firms; they’re able to stop this in its tracks. By utilizing their assistance, you can drastically improve who you recruit to your team, as they have the time, resources, and expertise to pick the very best. It doesn’t hurt that they’ve got far more complete profiles to comb through on top of resumes and recommendation letters, so they can genuinely identify the strengths and weaknesses of all potential hires in a way your business may struggle to. It pays off in the end; that much is clear. Want to cash in on this? Connecting with the right staffing firm is an absolute must.