Pace Staffing Network

A ONCE FAMOUS COMER

A local dot comer, was in the early stages of launching a service with ambitious plans for growth. Their plans called for doubling the size of their workforce every six months. Our client’s objectives called for a staffing partner who could fill ongoing requests for employees with minimal notice in a continuously changing business environment.

We developed a service strategy specifically tailored for their high-growth objectives. We worked collaboratively with every hiring manager inside the organization to carefully profile the kinds of employees they wanted to hire as core employees. Our job was to ease our client’s recruiting challenges by making sure our “temps” had the qualities it took to become core so they could be recruited quickly but later converted to our client’s payroll as the business grew. This approach allowed our client to expand quickly and efficiently without sacrificing their high service standards.

Over a six month period, we hand selected over 80 employees for key positions in customer service and fulfillment. 65% of our “temps” were hired by our client providing them with an invaluable recruiting solution during a very hectic time.

A RAPIDLY EXPANDING RETAIL GROUP

In 1992, one of the Northwest’s leading retailers was expanding its distribution channels to include catalogue sales. The holiday season was fast approaching and a manager was appointed to launch a 35 seat customer service center to take and process orders from newly-created catalogs. The new manager was unfamiliar with call center operations and only marginally prepared for the recruiting, training, and other staffing related requirements that were required to get a trained workforce up and running in such a short period of time. They needed a flexible and innovative staffing partner.

We saw our role as being completely focused on the staffing component, leaving the new management team to work through systems and facilities issues. We quickly profiled the work to be done and developed simple to execute recruiting solutions that would produce the number of employees needed within the tight timeframe.
We supported their training requirement by providing 8 hours of pre-assignment training on the protocols of service. This augmented the client’s 40 hours of classroom training which was focused on their products and their automated order system.

We developed employee incentive programs to reinforce the client’s performance standards and “project completion”. We also implemented an on-site employee management program that proved to be prototype for their call center.

Together we developed a seasonal staffing model that could be built up and enhanced for many holiday seasons to follow. Several of our seasonal employees were hired by our client and were later promoted into lead and management positions.

A QUALITY FOCUSED MANUFACTURING COMPANY

When we first met our prospective client, their largest facility was utilizing multiple staffing vendors to supply temporary help for peak periods. In the flurry of growth, they oftentimes had difficulty finding the skilled workers they needed, resulting in missed deadlines and product defects. There were significant morale and turnover issues. Departments were spending to much time and wasted money hiring and training employees for long-term assignments who were leaving shortly after starting.

Because the company was working with multiple vendors to find and select employees, employee performance was inconsistent and often below standard. No one vendor seemed to care about the result of their work, either in how they selected the employees for assignment or how they were managed once on the job.

PACE was invited to look for a solution and conducted diagnostic surveys with the department managers and supervisors to better understand both the problems the company was experiencing and their underlying causes.

We developed a customized staffing program for recruiting, evaluating, orienting and managing employees that addressed each issue. We established a long-term partnership with this client, and today, their temporary workforce is an integral part of their overall staffing strategy.

The initial turnover issue was corrected and now remains at industry-low levels. In 1998, during one of their busier seasons, we successfully recruited 278 top temporary employees, who today, are the backbone of their manufacturing floor.

A SOFTWARE DEVELOPER AT A
PIVOTAL POINT

Our client’s new product became an overnight success and work was expanding rapidly. The client was managing their growth carefully, and supervisors could not get FTE approval fast enough to keep up with growing customer demands in their customer service and technical support areas.

Both groups used a temp-to-hire staffing strategy as their primary recruiting source. This often left long-term temporary employees unhappy or uncomfortable, questioning why they were not been selected for hire when core positions did finally become available. Morale was sagging at a time when the company needed stellar efforts from all their employees.

PACE developed a solution to place one of our staffing coordinators on-site to directly manage our temporary workforce. We customized a benefit package specifically for our client’s unique workforce ….something that was comparable to the benefit package offered to our client’s core employees. Our temporary employees were critical to our client’s success…and we made sure we treated them that way.

Through highly attentive and enthusiastic management of our temporary staff and structured review and communication programs implemented by our on site staffing coordinator, our client became the “place to work” in the world of “technology temps” in the early 1990’s and won many awards for Customer Service. PACE became a strong partner to our client’s HR and call center management team, and together, we created an integrated workforce that was able to move through the difficult issues that have plagued other companies who rely on alternative staffing to control headcount.

RE-ENGINEERING A
HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATION

Our client was going through a major re-engineering, scheduled to last up to a year. The client was concerned about the morale and productivity of its core workforce during a time when job security was fast becoming a significant issue.

PACE was brought in to provide temporary employees to augment core staff during this period of extended uncertainty. When turnover occurred, rather than hire a new employee, supervisors were asked to request one of our employees to do the work that needed to be done until the requirements of the new jobs could be more clearly defined.

Working with “temporary employees” in what had traditionally been core employee roles was a new challenge for our client’s supervisory team. We quickly recognized that one of the ways we could contribute was to help our client’s supervisory team get comfortable with new ways of overseeing the work of our temporary employees without becoming their employer. We also needed to find the right temporary employees, employees who would have the skills needed to fit into the client’s new work models but even more importantly who would have the personal flexibility to deal with long periods of uncertainty and our client’s organizational unrest.

We introduced an extensive orientation process for both the supervisors and our “re-engineering” support team, clearly outlining expectations and the reality of the current work situation. To avoid issues of co-employment, we placed one of our staffing consultants on site to support both the client’s supervisors and our employees. Together we were able to monitor our employee’s work and work attitudes regularly. We took action at the first sign of unrest…working with both our employees and our client’s supervisory team to create solid paths of information flow….“keeping each other informed”.

The client’s re-engineering project lasted well over two years. Many of our temporary employees became change models for the core employees around them. If a “temp” could come in and do work differently, they could too. Our on site staffing manager was a strong facilitator and helped both our employees and our client’s supervisory team get comfortable with new ways of working. Our employees were frequently shifted from one assignment to another, demonstrating their leadership around change and flexibility.

Today, many of our client’s core employees were once part of our re-engineering work team and have helped our client make change an institutional norm.

AN OUTSOURCED CALL CENTER

Our client was in the early stages of developing an outsourced call center…..a service that provided customer support for a variety of customers, all with different products or services. This business model was not without its staffing challenges. Not only did their customer service reps need to be incredibly good at service, but they also needed to be able to learn about new products and services quickly so as to provide service to the wide range of clients the call center serviced..

Turnover was high…..many reps were terminating in their 90 day probationary period, costing the company lapses in service delivery plus minimal returns on their training dollars. We recognized the need for improved screening and developed a comprehensive temp to hire staffing program that would only convert an employee to the client’s payroll after they had satisfied all training and performance criteria expected of a core employee.

We strengthened our program by providing up front service training so that the client could focus their training time on product and system details.

We benchmarked their top service reps….both on the required mechanical skills but also on the intangibles of performance success….and started selecting new employees based on these new benchmarks.

With all these factors in place, turnover during the first 90 days decreased dramatically…from well over 70% to under 20%. Because our model was temp to hire, the client actually had their turnover after 90 days decrease to less than 10%..

When the company shifted its focus to pursue more technical clients, we again benchmarked their top performers and identified the screening factors it would take to select employees who would be able to work in technical environments with more complicated service applications.