talent acquisition – Workforce

June 18, 2021October 7, 2021

Casinos scramble for post-pandemic talent as business rebounds

Casinos across the United States were among the hardest hit businesses as the hospitality and travel industries suffered through the pandemic.

Conventioneers and gamblers disappeared and unemployment soared as the iconic Las Vegas Strip looked more like a ghost town than a glitzy, bustling entertainment mecca. And the numbers tell a bleak tale.

Gambling revenues slid by 31 percent in 2020, according to an annual report by the American Gaming Association. By comparison, the report noted that the industry’s economic tumble in 2020 far outdistanced the 8.4 percent decrease during the Great Recession. And, the Las Vegas unemployment rate reached 30 percent at the height of the pandemic, according to reports.

Business and employees slowly return

But the casino business is bouncing back. Employees are now being snapped up to fill thousands of vacant positions as the Las Vegas unemployment rate has slipped back to single digits. Many of them will be working the conventions — the Society for Human Resource Management and HR Technology Conference among them — that are finally returning to in-person events in Las Vegas this fall.

Along with the mega-corporations that line The Strip, Eureka Casinos appears to have weathered the storm and is shaking off the pandemic’s effects to fully reopen for business. With Nevada properties in Las Vegas and Mesquite and a casino in New Hampshire, Eureka Casinos is the only employee-owned gaming company in the United States. That distinction puts Eureka Casinos in a unique position to entice job candidates in a desperate battle to staff up as visitors return.

The battle for talent

The scarcity of good talent is particularly acute as casinos rush to re-staff, said Eureka Casinos Chief Operating Officer Andre Carrier. Any casino’s growth is tempered by its ability to field a qualified workforce, he added.

To be competitive in talent acquisition, Carrier said Eureka Casinos instituted hiring bonuses and is offering employees flexible hours and dual rates to fit staffing needs and schedules. But their key competitive advantage is employee ownership, he said.

“It means that our employees are provided with a long-term retirement benefit with no direct contribution,” he said. “This is an exceptional benefit and one we hope allows us to not only to retain our talented people, but attract future employees.”

Also read: Allied Universal boosts its hiring as demand for security services surges

With an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP, employees take on an owner’s mindset, which means a stronger sense of buy-in to the business and each other, Carrier said. It became especially valuable as COVID-19 swept across the industry.

“The pandemic was an unimaginable crisis with much of the company’s business closing for nearly three months,” Carrier said. “The challenge was to establish new systems to care for the physical, financial and emotional needs of the employee owners rapidly and effectively.”

Research has shown that companies with an ESOP are less likely to lay people off and keep employees working than conventionally owned businesses. Employee ownership has helped Eureka Casinos build a family style atmosphere for employees among the massive gaming conglomerates.

Building employee engagement

Engagement was a huge priority for Eureka Casinos throughout the pandemic, Carrier said. Being a mega-corporation would have impeded their ability to focus on the needs of their 600 employees, 70 percent of whom are hourly.

“One of the main ways we kept our employees engaged throughout our three-month closure was a weekly drive-through food pantry,” he said. “Many of our employees volunteered to pack food baskets and pass them out, and we had volunteer drivers deliver baskets. This was just one more way that we came together as a family business.”

Producing videos on the expected timeline for the state’s shutdown, answering common questions and preparing employees for a return to work kept everyone updated, Carrier said.

Carrier said employees were paid “for as long as possible before any need for unemployment” during their closure.

“We also allowed employees to use paid time off if needed and paid for health care benefits while we were closed,” he said. Some departments remained on duty during the entire closure, he said, noting how the engineering team worked to fabricate all the Plexiglas dividers that were a requirement for reopening.

Vaccinating employees

Once vaccines were approved, Eureka Casinos worked with government agencies and local hospitals to develop a vaccination center and a process for employees and the community to get vaccinated. They created a reservations platform and staffed the center as well, he said.

Also read: EEOC says that employers legally can offer incentives to employees to get vaccinated in almost all instances

A rewards program also was established for employees wanting to be vaccinated.

“Any employee who gets vaccinated receives a cash bonus,” he said. “Once the company reaches two specific overall vaccination thresholds, additional bonuses are paid out to vaccinated employees.”

Tight talent pool

Carrier told Las Vegas television station KTNV that the pool of available worker talent in Las Vegas will remain tight as venues prepare for the second half of 2021. “This is arguably one of the most difficult times ever to find new people to join your company.”

But Carrier is optimistic that his casinos will fully rebound in large part because of their employees.

“Having hope for the future is a core value for Eureka Casinos, and the pandemic taught us how important that value is.”

August 26, 2020August 27, 2020

Incentive plan gives EMTs a new reason to ride with Ambulnz

A career as an emergency medical technician can be a demanding grind.

While there are clear rewards in such a compassionate, public-facing job, an EMT typically works long shifts, juggles hectic schedules and gets mediocre pay. Median compensation for EMTs and paramedics was $17.02 in 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A 2018 survey from the American Ambulance Association found that poor pay leads to high turnover among those working in the emergency medical services industry, which sees an annual turnover rate of 25 percent among full-time EMTs.

Facing turnover and retention concerns like much of the rest of the EMS industry, executives at Ambulnz sought solutions to retain its EMTs. The New York-based non-emergency, on-demand ambulance service sought to improve medical transportation through innovative technology, a higher level of care and better compensation for EMTs.

Retaining employees through incentives

In order to get the most qualified first responders, Ambulnz designed a novel benefit for its 1,200 hourly employees. The Equity Incentive Plan was created to encourage, recognize and reward exceptional performance for its employees, said Ambulnz President Anthony Capone.

Also read: Automate how your staff clocks in and out while cutting hours of admin work each week.

“We have been speaking about creating the Equity Incentive Plan for a couple of years and fully put it into effect for 2019,” Capone said. “It’s a path to entrepreneurship and the ability to build meaningful careers in the ambulance service.”

Capone pointed out that Ambulnz, which operates in eight states including New York, New Jersey, California, Texas and Illinois as well as the United Kingdom, distinguishes itself from the typical on-demand company such as Uber and Lyft through its business model.

“On-demand ride share companies have a business-to-consumer model, provide point-to-point transportation as an alternative to a taxi service and use independent contractors to provide their service,” Capone said.

“Ambulnz has a business-to-business model, provides medical transportation and we own our fleet of ambulance vehicles and employ full-time EMTs and paramedics.”

Ambulnz offers different levels of services ranging from a wheelchair-bound patient transport to a critical care transport, he said. When a patient needs to be moved to a new facility for treatment out of a hospital, outpatient treatment clinic, doctor, dialysis or chemo center, a pickup can be scheduled through the Ambulnz app, Capone added.

Case Study: Hoffer Plastics’ ‘family first’ philosophy puts people over profits

The vast majority of Ambulnz’s 1,300 employees are W-2, and only full-time employees are eligible for the incentive plan, he said. It differs from a startup’s typical equity compensation plan, he added.

“Usually startup companies provide equity compensation to new hires to entice them to bet on a relatively unknown company,” he said. “We are an established, growing company with over 1,000 employees. While it is not uncommon for tech startups to offer equity compensation for employees, Ambulnz is the only company in the medical transportation industry that offers this benefit to frontline employees.”

The incentive program was created to reward employees for their exceptional performance, he said. With that in mind, they decided to provide 2,000 equity units for each 500 trips eligible employees take in the previous year.

“This is based on volume, but performance is taken into account when employees become eligible for the program,” Capone said.

Besides the incentive plan, Ambulnz offers a base salary, medical benefits, bonuses and an optional “model program” for EMTs that offers them the ability to earn more than the national average for their profession, Capone said.

“EMTs who enroll are paid in part based on the number of calls they respond to,” he said. “In addition, EMTs are encouraged to stop by different outpatient centers, such as nursing homes, to introduce themselves, explain Ambulnz, and drop off a business card.”

Capone said the incentive program helps employees feel like they are part of the Ambulnz team and inspires them to do their best. They officially launched the program by issuing awards for employees 2019 trips, so there aren’t metrics to share yet, he said.

“The announcement has certainly energized our workforce, and numerous employees are inquiring about their 2020 trip counts to see how they’re tracking for this year,” Capone said. “Since its rollout, the plan has been a successful way to attract, retain and motivate our employees.”

There’s no need to wait until it’s too late to adjust the flow of work. You can see wage costs in real time and adjust staffing levels and assignments to maximize profitability with Workforce.com’s Live Wage Tracker.

July 28, 2020August 3, 2023

Headcount planning strategies to consider, even in the face of disruption

A vital part of any organization’s talent management strategy, headcount planning, or labor forecasting, ensures that it has the right number of employees with the right skills. But hiring more staff isn’t always an option. External forces or internal budget constraints may deter organizations from making the talent and staffing decisions it wants to make.

Workplace experts explained headcount planning strategies, how disruption informs future plans and how hiring someone new isn’t always necessary.

Also read: Labor analytics: A how-to guide for company leadership

Hiring from within

There are times when an organization should hire someone new, but with budget constraints, they need to rely on a current employee rather than a new hire, said Emily Rose McRae, a director in the Gartner HR practice. This is doable when certain units or teams at the company are moving more slowly, therefore giving them space to give up a team member to a different unit.

In many workplaces there is resistance to hiring from within, McRae said. Managers may have a long list of qualifications in mind for the person who will fill a particular role, and they may believe no internal hire meets those requirements.

Sometimes that may be true, she said, but a current employee often can do a new job with a reasonable amount of reskilling.

She suggested that companies find a current employee with a similar skill set who can take over the role for two weeks. This could be someone on a different team who has a lighter workload for the time being. Based on their experience in this new role, they can inform the manager from an outsider’s perspective what skills a candidate needs from day one versus what skills can be taught over time.

Regarding the long list of requirements and skills managers seek for a candidate, McRae also encouraged managers to realize that many skills are transferable. A candidate or current staff member who knows one spreadsheet software can easily learn another one.

Also read: Labor forecasting requires a stronger analytics skillset

While reskilling can be a valuable tool and can help workers move to roles in the company that weren’t an option before, it’s generally difficult to get people to reskill simply by making resources available, McRae added. Employees are busy and have responsibilities outside of work.

One effective way around this is to approach specific employees — like those in a department that’s at risk of being downsized — and offer them the opportunity to reskill with a specific new role in mind, McRae said. This strategy may motivate workers to learn new skills, since it’s difficult to get people to reskill with no end goal in mind.

Staff planning in a time of uncertainty, disruption and innovation

McRae suggested that managers and leaders do scenario planning — considering what possible outcomes are and having strategies mapped out to address these different possibilities.

For example, if demand for the product dropped by 50 percent due to various factors, what would happen to the business, and how could it address that? If a company discovered that the delivery service in their supply chain was disrupted in some way, how would it impact business? Essentially, what are the biggest risks and the possible outcomes of those risks?

Sometimes the way a business addresses these scenarios may be costly, like hiring more people to address new business needs, McRae said. In other cases, cross training employees may help fill necessary gaps.

Check out our white paper: Learning Alignment in an Uncertain and Disrupted Business Climate

Certain disruptions, like the COVID-19 pandemic, prompt organizations to feel the need to react right away and be short-sighted in the decisions they make, she added. But it’s important to remember that the immediate actions companies take with employees will have long-term consequences on how people view the employer and whether this workplace is viewed as one that cares about employees.

For example, redeployment programs — the process of moving employees to a different role in the organization rather than letting them go — will help contribute to a positive employer brand, McRae said.

“Organizations that are doing this — that are actively building redeployment programs and didn’t already have them before — they’re going to be much stronger coming out of this recruiting talent than the organizations that don’t,” she said. “While it’s not possible for every organization necessarily to do this for all their employees, the more organizations look to find the degree to which they can, the more successful they’ll be.”

Considerations for HR leaders

As organizations consider their headcount planning strategies, there are questions HR leaders can ask to inform decisions about the strategy. Depending on what catalyst event or disruption may happen, will it make talent more or less expensive? Will it change the skills the organization needs in its workforce?

Sometimes macro changes that happen in the market don’t directly impact an organization’s demand for talent but still affect its workforce in some way, McRae said. For example, during a recession, even if the company is doing well, employees may feel anxious about their job.

The potential of predictive analytics

Broadly speaking, predictive analytics allow organizations to collect and assess information on the external labor market. It can allow companies to get insights on what competitors are doing, McRae said. Maybe a competitor is hiring for new skill sets that would be valuable for any organization in the industry and could help inform their talent strategy.

Predictive analytics may also allow organizations to identify where there’s room to explore new opportunities, she said. For example, an observation that remote work is becoming more widely acceptable can lead to a company being more open to hiring talent from different geographies.

Also read: Labor analytics add power to workforce management tools

Other headcount planning tools

John Lacy, chief operating officer at Dallas-based technology marketing agency Idea Grove, said his organization is constantly working through these questions. It’s vital to ensure they have the right people with the right skills necessary to support the different services they provide clients.

Idea Grove uses several tools to help conduct this recurring analysis, Lacy said.

First, they are rolling out the “open-book management” style of running the company, which essentially means that employees are engaged in the process of forecasting key numbers and that they ultimately share in whatever rewards the company earns from better performance.

Lacy expects that this will help create a business full of employees who think and act like owners.

“At that point, the client-facing personnel will start to take responsibility for ensuring we have the right number of people to service the business, as well as ensuring that we have the right amount of each skill required to service our clients,” he said.

The organization also has a go-to pool of contractors that help serve clients when there are skills gaps to cover or when there’s more work to be done than expected.

“Once we know we have the appropriate level of business to support a person full time, then and only then will we bring a person on board, full time, to cover that need,” Lacy said.

July 13, 2020October 4, 2021

Human capital management: Enriching your human resources

Human resource management is an ever-evolving discipline in business management.

Dating back to the early 1900s, experts recognized that managing a workforce goes beyond carrying out transactional tasks and ensuring that there are hands on deck to get the job done. Gradually, more attention is given to understanding employee well-being and its importance in delivering quality work.

One expert who delved into the study of the workforce was James R. Angell, president of Yale University and the Carnegie Corp. He started a joint initiative between the Engineering Foundation and National Research Council to propel a research movement that looks into the science behind workforce management through unifying modern engineering, labor management, and educational bodies. It has given birth to Workforce.com today and for 98 years, this initiative has delved deep into the issues within the workforce and understand best practices in human resource management.

As market trends change and employee behavior and preferences shift, an organization’s human resources management practices should also pivot to meet these developments. Today, it is all about engaging the workforce to push the business forward and is a key component of business success.

Human Capital: Investing in your organization’s best asset

Human resource management, as its name suggests, is an area of business management that ensures a holistic experience for the organization’s most important resource — its people. It’s involved with the following:

Recruitment: Recruitment is the core foundation of building an organization’s human capital. It is involved in identifying the needs of the company and the particular roles that can fill those gaps. Attracting, screening, and onboarding candidates are all part of the recruitment process. The goal of the recruitment process is to successfully find candidates whose skills, values and motivations are aligned with the organization’s goals and culture.
Compensation and benefits: Compensation and benefits refer to what the company gives its employees in exchange for their work or service, and they include monetary and non-monetary components. A company’s compensation and benefits package includes an employee’s salary and government-mandated benefits. Other perks and incentives can be part of the deal such as insurance coverage, gym membership, housing allowance, company-sponsored trips and events.
Labor law compliance: Running an organization is governed by employment laws. Human resource management is involved in creating company policies that comply with labor regulations. Labor law regulations vary per region and they can change from time to time. That being said, a crucial part of human resource management is staying at pace with these changes and ensuring that company policies remain compliant.
Training and development: Training and development are focused on nurturing the potential of employees. Training refers to programs that are geared toward improving skills or learning new technical knowledge needed to perform tasks. Meanwhile, development is focused more on programs that enrich an employee’s overall growth concerning soft skills, leadership, communication, and adapting to certain situations.
Retention and engagement: Human resource management is also involved in creating strategies to keep employee turnover to a minimum. Retention and engagement programs are proactive steps to ensure that employees are motivated to perform their best not just for a paycheck but because they have a clear alignment of values with the organization. All of these parts should move cohesively to ensure the best experience possible for staff at every stage of the employee lifecycle.

Overcoming human resource management problems

Human resource management involves a lot of moving parts and these can come with their own sets of challenges. Here are common challenges in human resource management and ways to solve them.

Difficulty in attracting the right talent.

Delays in hiring can be costly, but an unfit hire can also be detrimental to an organization. So how do you know a candidate is fit for the role? While skills and experience are important in assessing whether an applicant is qualified or not, it’s also essential to look into whether they can fit into your company culture.

How to solve:

It’s all about clarity and a good candidate experience. Create your job ad in such a way that it highlights what you’re looking for and what’s in it for a qualified candidate when they get in. Provide information about the working style and culture that you have in your company. This will attract people who both have the required skills and similar values as you. At the same time, this can also filter out candidates who have a different working style and culture preference. Another common challenge is convincing candidates who are highly skilled and qualified yet passive. These candidates are most likely in touch with a lot of recruiters and are considering more than one job offer. How do you stand out? Look into what motivates this type of worker. Investigate what that person is looking for in an employer and see if that aligns with your goals, culture and compensation package. Customize your messaging accordingly.

Boosting your brand as an employer can also help increase your chances of attracting the right talent. According to research from Glassdoor, organizations that invest in employer branding are three times more likely to make a quality hire.

Poor candidate experience can also be the thing between you and a quality hire. Communication is at the core of solving this. Make sure that all details and instructions are clear at every stage of the process. Timely feedback and response are also crucial. Take a look at your current process and see how it’s affecting candidate experience and employer brand. Glassdoor found that organizations that create a strong experience for candidates improve their quality of hires by 70 percent.

Dealing with too much paperwork.

Human resource management deals with a lot of information — from employee details, company policies and other essential business documents. And too much paperwork can be a burden, especially when done manually. It can take time away from more valuable tasks like strategizing and optimizing programs and processes.

How to solve:

There are digital solutions that can remove the tedious task of processing paperwork. For instance, digital employee onboarding solutions help eliminate the long forms that new hires need to fill. They enable new staff to log in their information and upload important documents online. This ensures better accuracy of information, improves the employee onboarding experience, and allows for a better way for a new hire to spend his first day at work.

Understanding and applying labor laws.

Staying compliant with labor laws is a must. However, understanding regulations, applying them in policies, and staying at pace with labor law changes can be very challenging.

How to solve:

Implement a compliance strategy to avoid any potential financial and reputational repercussions of failing to comply. A compliance strategy is a set of programs and processes that’s geared towards ensuring regular updates and audits of policies and communicating any changes with staff promptly. Given the ever-evolving nature of regulations, it’s best to build a strategy and assign a working group to focus on compliance. Technology is also helpful in staying at pace with changes. For instance, some solutions automate labor law updates and ensure that these are reflected in the payroll computation.

Retaining employees.

Attracting the right talent is just half of the battle. The other half is retaining them and keeping them satisfied with their role, especially those that are performing above and beyond.

How to solve:

It’s all about consistent growth and learning. Employees are more likely to stay the course when they are given opportunities to grow and are recognized as a vital part of the organization’s success.

Training and development programs are essential to retaining employees. But creating these programs is not a one-time thing. That’s why it’s important to have regular alignments with your staff. Regular check-ins can help you get a pulse on their current sentiment about working in the organization, satisfaction with their roles, and the challenges or gaps they’re facing. From there, you can customize programs or identify next steps that can help them stay engaged.

It also pays to have a competitive compensation and benefits package. One of the things to keep employees happy and make them know that they are valued is by providing not just what they need to get their job done, but also offering other incentives that will motivate them to perform better and stay aligned with the values of the organization.

Engaging talent at every stage of the employee lifecycle.

Human resource management plays an important part in engaging employees, and it is a continuous process throughout every stage of the employee lifecycle, from onboarding up until the time an employee leaves an organization. All of these stages affect culture, staff morale, and the success of the company.

An organization is only as good as its employees. It’s imperative to nurture and cultivate staff no matter where they are in their tenure with the organization. Doing this takes time. That’s why it’s important for human resources to have the right technology in place so that they can reduce time on administrative tasks and focus more of their energy on engaging employees.

June 23, 2020August 3, 2023

Defining workforce management: Leading teams for success

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In 1922, James R. Angell, president of Yale University and the Carnegie Corp., led a joint initiative between the Engineering Foundation and the National Research Council. The goal was to take workforce science to new heights through unifying modern engineering, labor, management, and educational bodies. It has given birth to what we know today as Workforce.com and workforce management.

Since then, the team behind Workforce have delved deep into the science behind workforce management — from productivity, labor regulations, workforce challenges to the evolution of work. All of these insights have been put into practice with a full-featured workforce management platform that is being used by companies across the world.

The anatomy of effective workforce management

So what is workforce management? Based on almost a century’s worth of research and study, we identified three main components that are crucial at effectively leading teams. Each of them requires a unique approach, but as a whole these areas should function seamlessly. Let’s look at each of them.

Operations. When talking about workforce management, the first thing that comes to mind is operations management. It is all about making sure that quality output is created, within the given timeframe and resources in an organization. This involves planning and organizing. Some of the processes are creating employee schedules, timekeeping, output management and budget forecasting.

Labor compliance. Labor regulations govern workforces around the world. These laws are set to protect workers and regulate certain business practices concerning the welfare of employees such as wages, work conditions and employment relationships.

Labor regulations can differ by country or region, and these are taken into account in company employment rules and policies. While increasingly difficult to remain compliant, failure to do so can mean costly penalties that can greatly damage not just an organization’s bottom line but also its reputation.

Employee engagement. Employee engagement is an area of workforce management that focuses on enabling employees to perform their best in alignment with their individual purpose and the objectives of the organization as whole.

Employee engagement is typically correlated with happiness with work. But it’s important to note that they are not one in the same. Happiness at work is just one of the byproducts of good employee engagement. To achieve good employee engagement, there has to be a clear communication in the workforce — from onboarding to getting the job done.

Also read: How to make your onboarding process engaging and easy

Debunking common workforce management myths

Workforce management can spell success or failure for an organization. Let’s look at some of the common beliefs that can hinder success for an organization.

It’s just scheduling. While creating schedules is an important part of workforce management, it’s not just all there is. It has a lot of moving parts that are tightly integrated with each other. This includes timekeeping, budget forecasting and engaging employees.

Also read: Leave management should be as simple as submit, approve and hit the beach

It can be done manually or using spreadsheets. This can be done manually, but such an option can be prone to mistakes. One wrong value input can mess up the entire sheet and end up being counterproductive. It can result in wasted time to find the problem.

It is easier for smaller organizations. There are many factors at play in workforce management, and one of them is company size. But that doesn’t mean that a smaller organization has it easier than a big corporation. Each organization, regardless of size, has its own unique sets of goals, objectives and needs. And all of these come into play when managing the workforce. What makes it easier or harder is not just how many employees they have but also the alignment of roles, resources and objectives.

Upskilling or training can lead to more skills and less staff. Nurturing the potential of staff is vital in workforce management, but developing their skills and training them to gain new ones doesn’t necessarily mean a lesser need for staff.

There needs to be a balance in mentoring staff to be able to do more and making sure that they still have the space to master their newly acquired skills. Leaders need to be careful not to unnecessarily push staff from task to task or they can risk driving them to burnout.

Culture doesn’t have an impact on business performance or bottom line. Culture is one of the vital components that sets the tone for employee engagement. A company may have a strong set of policies but it will all be for nothing when the culture doesn’t sit well with the employees. It can lead to high turnover rates, lower productivity and overall low workforce morale, which can all impact the bottom line.

Also read: Give managers the time they need to sharpen up their all-around skills

It’s a one-time deal. Establishing processes for operations, labor compliance and employee engagement is a good start. But workforce management continuously evolves. There are always changes that will influence the needs of an organization and leaders need to be quick to adapt to those changes. Optimizing is constant in workforce management, and it’s something that leaders need to pay more attention to.

Setting up the workforce for success

Workforce management involves many processes that can be daunting and time-consuming for managers or team leaders. Here are some best practices that can make workforce management more efficient.

Use a workforce management platform. Leverage technology for the admin tasks involved in workforce management. Use a workforce management platform to accurately keep track of attendance, automate timesheet to payroll processing, scheduling, time-off management, and to make sure that labor laws are accounted for in computing for pay.

An effective workforce management platform goes beyond borders and allows for teams to work together no matter where they are. Go for a solution that can be accessible anytime, anywhere and on any device.

Before going for a workforce management solution, it’s imperative to look at your needs as an organization. According to the Workforce Management Trends for Hourly Workers, 46 percent of respondents say that poor integration with other systems is a shortcoming of their current workforce management platform. Avoid this type of challenge by understanding your requirements and considering ease of use for staff.

Monitor and optimize. Workforce management is all about maintaining efficiency and employee well-being. One advantage of automation is having data and analytics that can be a source of insights as to how you can optimize your operations and what areas you can improve on. Analyze your data and make informed decisions about how you can improve productivity and employee engagement in your organization.

Listen to your employees. Communication is key to a successful workforce. Always keep channels open to your employees. Since staff are always on the front lines, it pays to listen to them to gain better insight on customer service, identify operational gaps, and improve working conditions for staff.

Effective workforce management is all about employing smart solutions to spend less time on repetitive tasks and paperwork and more time on improving the business and empowering staff for success. It’s all about creating value for customers and employees alike.

June 16, 2020June 29, 2023

Give managers the time they need to sharpen up their all-around skills

timeclock, wage and hour, schedule, timesheet rounding

How to improve manager effectiveness seems like a loaded question.

Sure, there is always room for improvement. But how do you improve the effectiveness of a manager who shares responsibilities in almost every aspect of the business process? There are business operations including onboarding and offboarding, compliance and regulations, and scheduling shifts.

A manager also is involved in training, coaching and motivating staff. Sometimes they even play the role of staff psychologist. In short, a manager is an organization’s Swiss army knife.

Which leads to another question: If you are seeking ways to improve manager effectiveness, what blade of the knife gets sharpened first?

Manager basics

At its core, a manager’s job description lists overseeing daily operations, ensuring employee productivity, monitoring efficiency of all processes and creating a positive workplace environment. Because there are nuances to every aspect of a manager’s responsibilities, freeing up time could be the biggest perk an employer could provide for their supervisorial staff. By implementing workforce management solutions, employers empower their managers to make the right business decisions in less time through software solutions.

For those managing an hourly workforce, Workforce.com’s Live Wage Tracker software allows supervisors to see wage costs in real time and adjust staffing levels and assignments to drive profitability. Every shift becomes a profitable one, and because sifting through endless reams of paperwork is no longer necessary, a manager can concentrate on other ways to drive productivity and trim costs.

Creating effective managers

Managers rarely just materialize. A high-performing employee doesn’t necessarily make a great manager. The process takes patience and time — a rare commodity for managers in most businesses.

According to Great Place to Work, effective leaders should define the most important behaviors for great managers at an organization. While certain characteristics of manager effectiveness are universal, the best insights come from identifying the unique behaviors that align with an organization’s mission, culture, customer needs and strategic goals.

Find the managers inside an organization who build high-trust relationships.
Interview these managers and ask them how they did what they did.
Use this information to identify behaviors that create a great work environment and share them across the organization.

Once company leaders identify managers and their best practices, instill in them these ideals:

Work with teams, seek ideas from team members and involve them in decisions that affect them.
Recognize employees, especially by calling out accomplishments and helping employees get ahead in their careers.
Inspire employees to follow by showing them that leaders are competent, honest and reliable.

What managers need from employers

Equip managers with the solutions to work smarter so they will be more productive throughout their work day. The result is an efficient workplace and a supervisor who can create a work/life balance for themselves.

Managers are constantly looking for ways to be more efficient with their time. Provide the leadership and perspective to manage their time. Encourage and help managers to:

Establish their priorities.
Break big projects into small tasks.
Use a to-do list in the right way.
Eliminate distractions.
Avoid procrastination.

Perhaps the most important tool in a manager’s arsenal is time. Through workforce management software, time becomes an ally for a manager rather than an opponent. Implementing Workforce.com’s Live Wage Tracker platform provides actionable data that empowers managers to react quickly and confidently to unexpected changes and keep things running smoothly throughout the day.

June 10, 2020June 29, 2023

President extends PPP loan forgiveness, signs Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act of 2020

The Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act of 2020, which President Trump signed into law on June 5, makes several key business-friendly changes to the small business loans made under the CARES Act’s Paycheck Protection Program.

Specifically, this Act:

Extends the “covered period” borrowers have to use PPP loans and qualify for loan forgiveness from the original eight weeks to the earlier of 24 weeks from loan disbursement or Dec. 31, 2020.

Extends until Dec. 31, 2020, the CARES Act’s June 30, 2020, deadline to rehire employees and reverse salary cuts of more than 25 percent.

Exempts borrowers from the reduction in loan fordeadline to rehire employees and reverse salary cuts of more than 25 percent. giveness because of a reduction in employee headcount if the borrower is able to document in good faith that from Feb. 15 through Dec. 31, 2020, the borrower: (a) was unable to rehire employees who had been employed on Feb. 15 or hire similarly qualiﬁed employees for unﬁlled positions by December 31, 2020; (b) was unable to return to the same level of business activity at which the borrower was operating pre-Feb. 15 as the result of compliance with requirements, guidelines, standards for sanitation, social distancing, or other COVID-19 employee or customer safety issues.

Lowers the threshold for the use of PPP loan funds for payroll purposes from 75 percent to 60 percent.

Allows for an agreed-upon extension of PPP loan repayment from two years to five years.

Eliminates the CARES Act’s restriction on the deferral of payroll taxes for employers who receive PPP loan forgiveness.

As Suzanne Lucas (aka the Evil HR Lady) points out, this Act’s biggest benefit might be the gift of time it gives to employers to staff up. “Hiring is always a difficult part of running a business, and the terms of the original PPP put pressure on companies to act quickly.” She added, “If you don’t need someone working yet, you can wait until you do need someone in the position.”

Suzanne is correct. Even in the best of circumstances, hiring is time-consuming and difficult.

The current circumstances are far from best, and businesses that took PPP money felt tremendous pressure to hire by June 30 to qualify for loan forgiveness. Employees hired in haste often lead to mistakes. These amendments offer significant relief through the benefit of added time.

April 14, 2020June 29, 2023

Regulating recruiting amid constant technological innovations

recruiting, hiring, interviewing a candidate

As recruiters adopt advanced technologies in their quest to identify, court and hire candidates, attorneys are looking into the legal and regulatory issues those new tools may bring into play.

Lawyers, recruiting experts and technology vendors say legal teams are examining compliance concerns even as their colleagues in HR and IT evaluate products that leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning and other innovative approaches. Not only are they exploring the ramifications of privacy requirements such as Europe’s GDPR, they’re considering the possible impact of biases that may be inherent in a data set or unwittingly applied by algorithms.

“I think we’re at the beginning of sorting out what all this means, but I think it’s definitely something people are thinking about,” said Jeffrey Bosley, San Francisco-based partner in the labor and employment practice of law firm Davis Wright Tremaine. “It’s a new technology and it’s evolving. Whenever you have a new technology, you do have growing pains and you do have these issues that come up,” he said.

Advanced technologies have gotten much attention recently, particularly as people inside and outside the business world consider the impact AI may have on jobs and livelihoods. At the same time, some well-intentioned efforts have generated media coverage for results that were diametrically opposed to what their developers set out to do.

In 2018, for example, Amazon abandoned an effort to build a machine-learning tool for recruiters after the system proved to be favoring men over women. According to Reuters, the tool downgraded resumes that included the word “women’s” as well as the graduates of two all-women’s colleges.

Also read: Is there room for an ethics code for tech companies?

Sources inside Amazon said the system, which had been under development since 2014, was meant to review resumes so recruiters could spend more time building candidate relationships and actually hiring people. It worked by comparing applicants against patterns found among resumes the company had received over a 10-year period. However, it didn’t account for the dominance of men in the technology workforce. As a result, the system machine-taught itself that male candidates were stronger than females.

Advanced technology “is at an awkward stage where it’s not really intelligent,” said William Tincup, president of the industry website RecruitingDaily.com. While he sees great potential for AI and other tools to streamline the work of recruiters and even address bias in the hiring process, he believes systems are limited in how much they can accomplish.

Why? In a word, people. “What are machines learning from their learning from humans?” Tincup asked. Hiring managers can’t help but operate with a number of possible preconceptions in their minds, from unconscious bias about race or gender to a preference for the candidate they most recently interviewed or who seems the most like themselves. Such biases, Tincup observed, live on in the makeup of a company’s existing workforce. And that leads to the troubles Amazon faced, where the data set reflects decisions made in the past more than it positions a process to understand needs of the future.

Technology Races Ahead

The situation is complicated by the idea that technology has outpaced legal and business practices. While they believe that will eventually change, analysts and technology vendors don’t see it changing quickly.

“Right now, technology’s moving super-fast,” said Ankit Somani, co-founder of the talent acquisition and management platform AllyO, headquartered in Palo Alto, California. “Generally, regulators and the folks who control compliance standards don’t move so quickly. But, honestly, we’re like three lawsuits away from somebody taking it very seriously.”

Also read: Artificial intelligence is a double-edged sword. Here’s how HR leaders can properly wield it

“Therein lies a real big rub,” Tincup said of regulation’s lag behind talent acquisition and HR practices. Nearly all of the processes involved with turning candidates into employees touch some kind of employment law or EEOC-related issues, but “all of those rules are outdated,” he said. “We’ve been working outside of the rules for 15 or 20 years. I would argue that there isn’t a company in the United States that’s 100 percent compliant from sourcing to outplacement.”

Talent acquisition teams, and HR in general, understand that and are beginning to adopt, said Brian Delle Donne, president of Talent Tech Labs, an industry analyst and consulting firm based in New York. However, he believes determining exactly how and where compliance fits in with the use of new technologies has been complicated by the way “artificial intelligence” has been “grossly generalized” in industry conversations.

“Most of the time they’re talking about machine learning, or sometimes just automated workflow processing,” Delle Donne said. “When you get into true artificial intelligence, where the machine is making decisions, it’s a higher threshold that’s required for our concern about the accuracy of [its] recommendations and predictions.” The distinction between true AI and what might be called “advanced technology” is important, he believes, because people assume that the machine is prescient when it’s usually not. “In most cases, it will be quite a while until machines are actually making decisions on their own,” Delle Donne observed.

Even in today’s state, the use of advanced technology has become widespread enough to raise concerns about whether it might, inadvertently, nudge an employer out of compliance. For example, AI-driven tools may use personal information in unplanned ways that a candidate hasn’t given permission for. That would raise privacy concerns. Or, tools might present results that, intentionally or not, run afoul of fair-employment legislation. “On both fronts, you’re talking about compliance statutory norms,” said Delle Donne.

AI’s Behavior

Such concerns, along with widespread speculation about AI’s impact, has made advanced technology “front of mind for many people,” said Bosley. In response, governments at all levels have begun generating “a patchwork” of laws that sometimes conflict with one another.

For example, Illinois’s Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act went into effect Jan. 1, 2020. The law sets out transparency and consent requirements for video interviews, as well as limits on who can view the interviews and how long they can be stored. However, Bosley said, the law’s mandate to destroy videos within 30 days may conflict with the preservation requirements of other state and federal laws, including in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Also read: How Will Staney continues to change the talent acquisition game

“It puts employers in a position where they’re really going to need to assess risk,” Bosley said. “They’re going to need to come up with creative solutions to try and work around some of this risk.”

Not all employers may feel exposed in the near term, Tincup suggested. He estimates that each year only a handful of legal actions are taken because of a candidate’s unhappiness with the recruiting process. People practices, technology practices and civil and social discourse are “way ahead of employment law,” he explained. “So is this something that’s going to create an immense amount of risk? No.” Employers today, he believes, put themselves at more risk by hiring a salesperson with a history of sexual harassment. In that regard, “you could spend more money in risk mitigation … than in recruitment technology,” he said.

At the same time, an organization’s risk may be based on activities that aren’t related to recruiting or the workforce, Bosley points out. “This isn’t just a human resources issue anymore. It’s not only an employment law issue anymore. It’s much broader than that,” he said. “You have data protection, data compliance, privacy and the potential for disparate impact claims as opposed to disparate treatment claims.”

Bosley anticipates more claims will be filed that look into a database’s contents, what data’s being looked at, how it’s being processed and whether algorithms are static or refined over time. Essentially, these claims will examine how advanced technology is making its decisions. “It’s going to be something where human resources leaders are looking to involve others in the organization and make sure that they’re both issue-spotting and getting ahead of some of these compliance issues,” he said.

Indeed, Somani believes this notion of “explainability” — laying out what a system does and how it’s doing it — will become more important in the realms of recruiting technology and compliance. “There should, in my mind, be more compliance standards around that,” he said.

Evolving Standards

Even at a basic level, compliance standards for using technology in recruiting “don’t exist,” Somani said. For example, does texting about a job opportunity constitute a form of marketing? Is such a text permissible if it’s personalized? Because the answer’s not clear, he believes many companies are putting stricter guidelines in place.

Somani also said legal departments are becoming more involved in the purchase and implementation of recruiting technology. For tools handling communications, such as those that facilitate SMS messaging between recruiters and candidates, they’re trying to anticipate issues by creating policies that cover not only privacy, but data collection and permissions. “It’s an explicit ask in almost every deal we go into: ‘If a consumer doesn’t want to interact with your system, how do you follow that?’ ” he said. When it comes to issues related to AI’s under-the-hood work, vendors focus on transparency and disclosure by presenting disclaimers on their product or within their privacy policies.

For enterprises, compliance issues “can be a deal-breaker,” said Megan Gimbar, the Holmdel, New Jersey-based product marketing manager for iCIMS Hiring Suite, at least at the corporate level. While compliance and consistency are important components of her product, she said, talent acquisition teams often shy away from the topic.

In the past, employers tried to ensure compliance through training. Their approach, said Delle Donne, was to make hiring managers aware of interview questions that shouldn’t be asked (such as inquiring whether a woman intended to have children) or information that shouldn’t be considered (the candidate’s age or ZIP code). “That’s a fairly low bar,” he observed.

The bar began getting higher “once we started saying algorithms are going to make that determination for us,” Delle Donne continued. “Algorithms might actually do a better job, [or] may actually be set up in a way that they might do a better job, than humans do at avoiding compliance issues through bias.” However, he said, that requires planning and a focus on non-discrimination features when algorithms are designed.

Also read: The ethics of AI in the workplace

Compliance Further Afield

The compliance issues raised by using AI in recruiting aren’t limited to talent acquisition alone. For one thing, Somandi notes, recruiters today leverage a variety of tools that were introduced into other functions.

Think of how candidate management systems and customer management systems align. When using those technologies, compliance may involve adapting the standards used by marketing or sales so they can be applied to talent acquisition and HR.

That road goes both ways. Even solutions designed for recruiters raise issues that aren’t unique to hiring, Delle Donne said. “As HR tries to digitize, there are many, many places where technology can streamline processes and save time and perhaps be more beneficial to the employee or the party,” he said. Many, if not all, of those will lead to some kind of compliance question. For example, a bot used in benefits administration may build a profile of confidential medical information. Or, a learning program might enter performance scores into an employee record without informing the employee. That could be a problem if those scores impact a person’s future promotions or career path.

As it digitizes, the tools implemented by HR “will bring in these technologies and there’s going to have to be some focus or some attention given to not inadvertently creating bias or discrimination, or revealing private information,” Delle Donne said. “If you take a step back, it just could be like whack-a-mole. I mean, ‘Hey, we see it over here in talent acquisition. Let’s go chase that down and… Oh, wait. We just saw this going on over there.’”

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April 14, 2020June 29, 2023

How LAZ Parking discovered the secret sauce for employee engagement

LAZ Parking has a corporate history straight out of a Netflix mini-series. And it’s shaped the company’s culture and values ever since.

In the summer of 1981, Alan Lazowski was an aspiring college student trying to earn a little cash before his senior year at the University of Connecticut. Instead of looking for a job, he borrowed money from his grandfather and started a parking valet service for a local restaurant in Hartford, Connecticut. By summer’s end, he and two of his friends were managing five parking locations and had 30 employees.

Nearly 40 years later, Lazowski and his co-founders, Jeffrey Karp and Michael Harth, have grown that summer business into the second largest parking company in the country. LAZ Parking now has more than 13,000 employees and $1.4 billion in annual managed revenues, and operates more than a million parking spaces.

The founders attribute their success story in large part to their long standing goal: “Create opportunities for employees and value for clients.”

Luis Henriques LAZ Parking — Luis Henriques, general manager, LAZ Parking

That mission isn’t just a sign on the wall. Leaders across the company genuinely care about everyone on the team, from part-time valets to senior executives. They treat hourly workers like they will be with the company forever, said Luis Henriques, general manager for LAZ in Hartford. “Creating opportunities for employees is our secret sauce.”

Henriques knows from experience. He started at LAZ in 1989 as a teen-ager parking cars on weekends. His vice president recognized his dedication, and when Henriques completed his associate’s degree the company offered him a night management position overseeing 100 employees. Today he is responsible for 20 managers and more than 850 employees.

“I grew up in this company,” he said. “It is my family.”

LAZ leaders know that valet and parking attendant jobs aren’t glamorous, and that most employees see these jobs as a temporary measure to earn some quick cash. But the company is doing everything it can to encourage them to stick around, said Andi Campbell, senior vice president of people and culture.

Campbell was hired in 2012 as director of talent with the primary goal to “fill the talent pipeline.” Soon after she moved into the people and culture role because LAZ leaders recognized that finding and keeping talent is all about the company culture.

Everyone Deserves a Second Chance

The emphasis on creating opportunities for employees is seen everywhere at LAZ, beginning with recruiting.

“We are laser-focused on using data and KPIs to be sure we are getting people where we need them, and getting them into development,” Campbell said. “To grow as fast as we are growing, we have to find really good people, which isn’t always easy.”

The company hosts national job fairs in 20 cities twice a year and actively recruits everyone from college students to recent parolees.

“We are very big on second chances here,” said Henriques. He noted that while many companies won’t give previously incarcerated people an opportunity, LAZ believes these candidates can be great assets to the company. “They paid the price for what they did, and our experiences with them have all been positive.”

Once hired, employees are immersed in company culture from day one, so people know right away that the job can be more than just a temporary gig.

The LAZ onboarding process includes a variety of events, including Get Connected, a lunch and learn where employees meet with local, regional and national managers to talk about the company and opportunities beyond the front line.

“Our CEO always says that leaders are the ambassadors of the company,” Henriques said. “You have to take time every day to listen to your people. That’s what makes us different.”

Andi Campbell, SVP People & Culture, LAZ Parking

The company is also quick to celebrate its employees. Managers hand out Rave Cards that acknowledge employees who do excellent work, and the company throws elaborate end of the year parties for front line workers.

“Recognition is a big part of motivation,” Henriques said. “It’s how we say thank you to our staff.”

It Starts With Management

Campbell also makes sure that managers have the training and guidance to promote the company’s values in every employee interaction. This is key to the company’s engagement strategy.

“If you want to improve employee well-being, or safety, or engagement, it all comes down to how managers manage their people,” Campbell said. “Front-line workers don’t know the VPs, but they do know and trust their managers, so the key to change is at that mid-level.”

Whenever the company wants to address a corporate issue or encourage a certain behavior, it starts with manager training. Campbell has launched a series of learning programs over the years that align with corporate strategy, including how to meet the needs of front-line workers, how to prevent safety issues, and how to identify and promote high performers. Along with core workshops or live training events, she also provides frequent communications with management tips, access to coaching clinics, and a catalog of online training that managers can access any time. “When you teach people how to lead teams on the ground, that’s how you move the needle.”

One of the most successful efforts has been around teaching managers to be effective coaches, mentors and advocates for their people. Managers like Henriques are taught to always be on the lookout for passionate employees who might be LAZ management material.

When they identify these high performers, they can nominate them to attend LAZ University, an 10-week business management program that prepares aspiring hourly workers for management roles. Attending the training is considered an honor, and it draws attention to the company’s commitment to growth — both for employees selected for training, and those who see them move up the ranks, Henriques said.

Local and regional managers are also encouraged to suggest employees for management roles where positions open up. Henriques has promoted five people in the last nine years. “Their co-workers see that and recognize the opportunities are there.”

Hugs Not Handshakes

All of these values have been part of LAZ from the beginning, and are constantly reinforced by Lazowski himself. “He really cares about people,” said Tina Cyr, accounts payable director. Lazowski takes the time to learn everyone’s name, and is always available for a chat or a hug. “We are big huggers around here,” Cyr said.

Tina Cyr LAZ Parking — Tina Cyr, accounts payable manager, LAZ Parking

Cyr was initially surprised by the warmth she felt after coming to LAZ from a much more corporate environment, but she quickly embraced it. “There is something really special about a genuine family culture,” she said. “It really feels like they put people before profits.”

While the company may have a touchy-feely approach to engagement, they also keep a close eye on results. Campbell tracks data on every program she initiates, and sets key performance indicators to measure success.

That helps her prove the impact of her programs, and to tie culture investments to bottom-line results. Most recently, efforts to improve safety and wellness have helped the company reduce its per employee per month healthcare claim costs, despite being in a rapid hiring phase.

“We see wellness as a huge opportunity for LAZ,” she said. It lowers costs, reduces absenteeism, and reinforces the company’s commitment to employee wellbeing.

The company has also seen engagement numbers steadily rise, and its turnover has dropped below 17 percent for salaried employees, and 70 percent for hourly workers.

“For the hospitality industry, those numbers are amazing,” Campbell said.

LAZ may have a unique culture and history, but Campbell believes that it can be replicated. The key is to make culture part of everyone’s responsibility, she said. Whether a company is trying to figure out how to improve retention, promote wellness, or drive bottom line results, when leaders factor employee needs into their business decisions, they make choices that allow a positive corporate culture to blossom.

“It sounds simple,” she said, “but that’s how we connect culture to everything we do.”

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February 12, 2020June 29, 2023

Ready staffing: The growing influence of RPOs

Since its founding in the early 2000s, recruitment process outsourcing companies have expanded their services and are now used as less of a tactical approach for ready staffing and more strategically for company growth.

With that in mind, organizations with ready staffing needs have a choice as RPOs have evolved to become much more agile.

The Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association defines RPO as “a form of business process outsourcing where an employer transfers all or part of its recruitment processes to an external provider.” RPOs essentially serve as an extension of the human resources department with solutions that organizations can customize based on their ready staffing needs and resources.

However, RPOs should not be confused with staffing agencies. Unlike staffing agencies, RPOs take ownership of the management and design of recruiting processes, are responsible for the results and they promote the client’s brand instead of their own.

Jesse Silkoff, co-founder and president of MyRoofingPal, an online marketplace for residential and commercial roofers across the United States, said that his company switched from a staffing agency to an RPO because of the lack of results.

“They filled positions, but in a way I couldn’t engage with. And once the position was filled, they collected their payment and disappeared into the ether until we needed them again,” Silkoff said in an email statement. “They offered no help beyond the things we could have honestly done ourselves.”

After switching to an RPO, Silkoff said that he felt like the company had hired their best talent. “It took about twice as long to fill positions before, and now they’re filled at a lightning fast pace by quality professionals who are interested in the future of the company,” Silkoff said. “While there might come a point where I no longer need that partnership, right now it’s been invaluable.”

The RPO industry looked much different 10 years ago as using virtual assistance to fill positions was only an emerging market. Daniel Ramsey, founder and chief executive officer of real estate virtual assistant company MyOutDesk, LLC, highlighted the evolution of RPOs as he said that today, the applicant pool is almost limitless.

“This has allowed for true global businesses and an ever increasing workforce,” Ramsey said in an email statement.

Ready staffing not only has been serving an increasing amount of small and large businesses, but has also proven to be beneficial to small businesses in particular, according to Ramsey.

“A good RPO can find the right person for every business, regardless of the position or the size of the business,” Ramsey said. “This ability has opened up so many possibilities for small businesses to afford growth they might otherwise not be able to afford due to lack of time and money to interview and research potential new hires.”

Companies should also consider the size of the RPO firm, their service structure, cultural fit and cost before deciding which RPO to partner with. Courtney Cook, vice president of RPO strategic development at management consulting company Korn Ferry, said that establishing cultural alignment and trust is critical for mutual success for both the RPO and the buyer.

“Your RPO program and the overall talent acquisition process, from high-volume recruiting to professional hires and executive search, should fit together seamlessly,” Cook said in an email statement. “Instill a rigorous and regular meeting rhythm to measure performance, bottlenecks, best practices and market insights to drive continuous improvement.”

According to Joseph Quan, co-founder and CEO of HR software company Twine Labs, RPOs are not a one-size-fits-all solution. While RPOs can bring expertise around how to set up a recruitment process, help define a plan for how to analyze recruitment efficiency, and implement technology solutions that increase efficiency, Quan also said that they cannot change the culture of the organization.

“Lack of institutional support around the importance of recruiting, lack of executive buy-in or unclear internal expectations around hiring aren’t things an RPO can solve,” Quan said in an email statement. “We often see RPOs fail due to this mismatch in expectations.”

The companies that Quan sees getting recruitment right are the ones that have “true alignment from the CEO on down that hiring is a core competitive advantage,” he said. “Hiring managers are bought in to the importance of hiring and spend a substantial amount of time on it. HR teams are forced to be data-driven, not only looking at metrics like cost per hire but analyzing every element of their recruiting funnel, optimizing for efficiency and assessing true impact metrics.”

However, for those companies that find outsourcing their ready staffing to be the most beneficial option, there must be an understanding of each others’ core values, mission and vision, said Cook. “It really depends on the unique needs of a specific company, their culture, openness to partnership and their level of talent maturity,” Cook said.

“RPOs can be a viable long-term solution for organizations if you partner with the right one,” Ramsey said. “After all, if an RPO is sending you quality employees, saving you money and understands the needs of your business, why do it yourself anymore?”