By: Bill Ehrmantraut of Strategic Value Partners
As we proceed through the day-to-day challenges of staffing, engaging in the never-ending task of trying to recruit talented employees, to fill the continuous stream of orders – we often forget to take a step back and really evaluate the processes and procedures we use to run our business.
A couple of years ago, our business, OmniSource, was faced with the need to update our staffing software system. We knew that the new system would provide all the latest technologies to help us improve our productivity. At the time we didn’t realize until we were well into the implementation of our staffing software, was that it was the catalyst driving us to, in turn, truly evaluate all of our established processes and procedures.
Through the software implementation process, we were tasked with mapping out all our current (old system) processes and redesigning them to fit in with the new systems and technologies.
Truth is, over the years we could have made a lot of adjustments processes and procedures that could have made our operations much more efficient and saved money. So, we began seriously evaluating our staffing business. We found that our application process was way too long and we didn’t take advantage of the job board services available to cut recruiting time. Branch offices followed different processes to do the same functions and found short cuts without sharing them with the entire organization. Some of the short cuts became engrained in the business even though they were not approved methods.
The ultimate lesson learned from the software implementation was that once we got to the clean slate with the new system, as an organization we were going to have to embrace a continuous improvement ideology.
For us, this meant redefining the goals of the Implementation Team to commit to and embrace an environment of continuous improvement. They were tasked with ensuring that, as an organization, we were continually reviewing our processes and procedures to identify and implement additional improvements to our business. Whether it was adopting new features that the software had to offer, centralizing our phone systems or auditing branches for procedure compliance, we committed ourselves to being best in class.
We committed to finding the industries best practices and comparing them to our processes and procedures. Also, we were dedicated to upkeeping, upgrading and standardizing our software training for everyone in the organization.
It was through this continuous improvement process that we reaped additional ROI from our new staffing software by learning and implementing a much broader spectrum of the functions and features of the system. Through time studies and simple technology additions we found more efficiencies in our applicant onboarding process. We dug deeper into our staffing firm’s advertising and recruiting practices and focused our resources more on a targeted basis versus the broad net that we had used for years.
Bottom line is, while all these things take time and effort and resources, they will bring long-term cost savings and increased productivity. In today’s competitive environment, your business must have a continuous improvement program just to keep up with the pace of technology and a dynamic market.
Bill Ehrmantraut and Chris Leigeb are the principals of Strategic Value Partners (SVP) a consulting group that specializes in supporting clients engaged in the Staffing Industry. SVP works with staffing companies to provide advice on industry best practices and supporting them through the vetting, selection and implementation of staffing software.
Prior to SVP, Bill and Chris had 18 years’ experience as owners and executives of OmniSource Staffing, a multi-state light Industrial staffing company with 50 active users.
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