Call Them Temps. Call Them Contractors. Call Them Consultants. Whatever You Call Them – You Need Them! Employers who have mastered the management of large and strategically focused flexible workforce's, and have learned to embrace this workforce rather than see it as a necessary evil, know that the workforce strategies represented by these workers are anything but temporary. … Read More »
“Above the Crowd” is just one more way for us to talk about “making a difference” which has been a watchword for our company, the PACE Staffing Network, since its founding over 35 years ago. Being different by finding people for our clients who “make a difference”, and by helping our clients differentiate their businesses from their competitors, is, for us, the one and only way to truly rise “above the crowd”. … Read More »
What we often find is that the interview questions that are the most clever or engaging for both interviewer and interviewee, simply don’t provide the information about candidates that the decision makers need and actually matter to placement success. … Read More »
As reported by Allen Smith, Manager of Workplace Law for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), in a mid-September announcement. Using data provided by Quest Diagnostics for calendar years 2012 and 2013, the increase reported represents the FIRST INCREASE in marijuana positives since 2003! After reaching a high of 13.6% in 1988, positive drug testing outcomes had been steadily decreasing. In 2013, positive test results were up 3.7%, following a 3.5% increase in the positive rate the year prior. The connection between this increase and the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington did not go unnoticed. Positive results for marijuana use in Washington increased by 23% and in Colorado 20%, compared to a 5% increase among the US general workforce covering all 50 states. The PACE Staffing Network has been offering and then administering drug testing on our client’s behalf since the early 1990s. Initially, our clients got a lot of push back on their drug testing policies, but today, both pre-hire and random drug testing practices are considered the norm with only an occasional challenge from the ADA related to screenings for prescription drugs. While “for cause” testing is more frequently contested, according to Quest, it is the most common reason why workers are drug tested. At the current time, our clients range from zero tolerance employers who require all applicants for either permanent or temporary employment to be rigorously drug tested, to employers who openly request that we not drug screen, concerned that recruiting results will fall short of the numbers of employees needed—particularly when the workers are being used for short term, temporary assignments where product out the door is the driving factor in HR policy. Some employers claim that while some of their workers are known weekend marijuana users, they are amongst their best workers and don’t want an unnecessarily “restrictive” HR policy to interfere with their “business as usual” mentality. The type of drug testing our clients ask us to administer provides some clue as to their level of “tolerance” they are willing to enforce and at what cost. Employers who are serious about eliminating any type of drug use from their workforce typically require hair testing over urine or saliva testing because of its ability to uncover signs of drug use for up to 6 months. Unfortunately, we anticipate these will be the first types of drug testing methods to be legally challenged. While at the current time employers in both Washington and Colorado retain the right to restrict the recreational use of marijuana by employees and can impose sanctions on employees testing positive for marijuana whether it was ingested during a work day or on the weekend. Many believe that the court test of these “one size fits all” types of drug testing policies and sanctions are just around the corner.
Part II. ACA Requirements and Penalties - 2015! Yes, the 2,300 pages it took to write the law, followed by the 10,000+ pages of regulatory interpretation can be daunting, but with the January 1st launch of our transitional year just around the corner, we are taking the time to boil down the complication into the “critical few”—things our clients MUST KNOW about what lies ahead. In Part I, we provided a complete glossary of ACA terms—just so you would have a playbook. In Part II, we are providing a simple outline of employer and employee requirements for 2015.
This article was prepared by Jeanne Knutzen, CSC, the President and Founder of the PACE Staffing Network. PACE remains committed to full compliance with the ACA and offers a variety of staffing products and services designed to ensure that our clients have options for containing the costs associated with ACA compliance. For a confidential discussion of how these services might be applied to your workforce, particularly your temporary and contract employees, contact a member of our PSN partnership team at infodesk@pacestaffing.com or 425.6376.3312.
Okay…while not a pure play contrarian, I’m finding myself reacting less than enthusiastically to all the talk on employee retention that has been hitting the airwaves lately—apparently the hot topic in the staffing world. For me, the mandate that companies do what is necessary to retain their high value talent is HR 101. So when I read all the hoopla on the value of retention, I want to make sure our readers also hear the other side of the story—that for some jobs, the goal can’t always be about reducing turnover/improving retention, but needs to be more about better managing the turnover they have—smartly, proactively! MANAGED TURNOVER is a different sort of staffing strategy that I believe has a legitimate place in any hiring manager’s arsenal of staffing options. Most (but not all) of the MANAGED TURNOVER staffing models we put together for our clients are developed in response to scenarios involving what we call High Impact/Low Appeal (HI/LA) jobs! You know those jobs—ranging from that pesky front office job that was crafted from all the work no one wants to do, to the folks in your warehouse doing that boring, repetitive assembly type work that no one could pay you enough to do. No matter how great the manager’s motivational skills or generous the company’s pay programs, the nature of HI/LA work lends itself to workforce issues—increases in absenteeism, accident rates, and other workplace mischief that makes HR shutter. Sooner or later most HI/LA jobs suffer from high levels of voluntary or involuntary turnover, directly impacting team or company performance. When asked to find employees for HI/LA jobs, one of the first things we explore is the option of ending the uphill battle for retention, and replacing it with a staffing model involving a strategically rotating group of temporary workers. Here’s why:
The goal of a MANAGED TURNOVER staffing model is to optimize the number of workers in the earliest, most productive, stages of the performance cycle, while systematically cycling out employees just before they start into the downward cycle. When done proactively, the employee’s temporary assignment begins and ends at predetermined times, most correlated with optimized worker performance.
One of the important benefits of a MANAGED TURNOVER staffing model is that it side steps all the negativity embedded in a core employee staffing model applied to HI/LA jobs. Employers no longer spend time outlining their defense of a decision to terminate a core employee. Employees no longer struggle with a job that is no longer challenging. Assignments begin and end in accordance with a custom designed staffing plan based on the performance cycle typical of that particular job or workforce. Minimal hassle, minimal complication. The heavy lifting of replacing departing employees is assigned to a third party staffing agency, reducing if not eliminating internal recruiting costs. Another side benefit of a MANAGED TURNOVER staffing model is that your temporary workforce becomes an always-available pool of candidates for hire. As all hiring managers know, when it’s time to hire the ramp up time, costs to find, screen and hire a new employee can be significant. And there is no guarantee that who your hire will work out. Having a large number of auditioning workers continuously available for hire allows employers to hire in a timely way, selecting only the very best to become a part of their core team, reducing the costs and disruption of hiring errors.
Not to worry, a MANAGED TURNOVER model doesn’t mean your entire workforce becomes "temps." Depending on the work to be performed, there are identifiable ratios of core and non-core workers that optimize overall performance. Too many temps and stability suffers. Too many core workers and your operational costs will eat away at your bottom line during your less busy periods. Ratios of temp to core workers can range anywhere from 10-15% to a high of 85-90%, depending on your business cycles and the nature of the work.
Here are two examples where one of our PSN partnership teams implemented “managed turnover” staffing models that improved worker outputs, dramatically reduced recruiting costs, and/or improved overall team performance and morale:
Some of our earliest converts to a managed turnover staffing model were call center clients who were hiring large numbers of entry level employees for service roles. One particular call center was facing a serious issue with first year turnover which was both increasing their internal recruiting costs, while also impacting service levels. 1. In partnership with our client’s HR team, our call center recruiters augmented the client’s recruiting team, reducing our client's internal recruiting costs. We worked in partnership to implement a uniform staffing process where all employees, sourced either by the client or our own recruiting teams, were screened and onboarded in the same way. All new call center reps were employed by PACE during the first 90-days of their employment.
This “audition period” allowed employees who were unable to meet the client’s expectations to be systematically removed from their assignment so that at the end of the audition period, the client offered employment only to those employees who were able to meet the full scope of their expectations. Those not measuring up were either given an extended “audition” period or their assignment was ended. Using this “managed turnover” staffing model in effect transferring most of the first 180-days of turnover to PACE, the client’s first year turnover rates were cut in half. Employees whose assignments were ended during the audition period became available to be placed on other PACE assignments, better suited to their personality or skill sets. 2. A second example is provided by one of our large healthcare clients who were experiencing turnover, attendance and workplace injury issues in their laundry area. After viewing the work, it was easy to see the classic HI/LA profile—physically demanding, repetitive, and ultimately boring work.
While the client initially asked us to help them improve their hiring outcomes (i.e. reduce turnover), our recommendation was that they focus instead on better managing the turnover we suspected was there to stay.
With the client’s guidance, we implemented a MANAGED TURNOVER staffing model. As each core employee left we replaced them with a temporary employee, whose assignment varied in length depending on our client’s anticipated needs. The employer’s workforce was soon “mostly temps” who were hired for specific work performed for a specified time period—and were oriented and managed accordingly.
The PSN partnership team set up a performance management system which, with our client’s help, was used to manage the employee’s performance. When an employee started to fall below defined standards, PACE, not the client, invested its recruiting resources to find a replacement candidate. For this client, the MANAGED TURNOVER staffing model delivered a level of orderliness and predictability to their staffing process they hadn’t experienced in the past. It eliminated the negative impact of unexpected turnover, as well as taking away the pressure on their internal recruiting teams to staff a high turnover workforce. For our temporary employees, it provided them with assurance that when their assignment ended, their performance would earn them the opportunity to be placed elsewhere. Workplace injuries were reduced by cycling temps in and out of the performance cycle, avoiding the burnout that had been a contributing factor to both attendance and workplace accidents. Obviously this MANAGED TURNOVER staffing model can’t be applied to all jobs and all work environments. And even if you determine that one of the HI/LA jobs you manage would lend itself to a MANAGED TURNOVER staffing model, there are some basics that need to be in place: The Right Staffing Partner. A staffing agency who only knows how to recruit people is not the partner you need to implement a MANAGED TURNOVER staffing model. Look for an agency who knows how to address productivity issues, has tools and systems in place to help you manage employees, and can bring you ideas about how to implement a managed turnover staffing plan. Look for a staffing partner as interested in solving your operating challenge as you are. The Right Financial Model. You will need to keep your CFO aware of what you are doing and why as you will be purposefully expanding your budget for temporary staffing while decreasing the monies you spend on high cost core staff.
While the per hour costs of temps and core employees is almost identical (by the time you factor in all the regulatory and benefit costs of core employees), depending on how your company organizes its budgets and expense allocations, the costs of these two different types of employees can end up in different places on your financial reports and may trigger questions from “up the chain.” You will likely need at least one senior manager on your team who understands the shift you are making in how you are doing “staffing,” and why. The Right Mindset. Most of the MANAGED TURNOVER staffing models we implement with clients tend to migrate into very objective, data driven, staffing processes. Even though you are no longer managing core employees, the need for clear performance standards, transparent metrics, and fair administration does not go away! This article was written by Jeanne Knutzen, the founder and CEO of the PACE Staffing Network. The PSN partnership teams are well versed in a variety of flexible staffing strategies, including MANAGED TURNOVER programs. For a complimentary consultation on what flexible workforce recruiting and staff strategies might work in your organization, contact us via our InfoDesk at infodesk@pacestaffing.com or by calling 425-637-3312.Speaking as a company who takes the time to 1) understand the work our temporary employees will be doing for our customers, 2) determine the skills, knowledge, and experience our workers need to have to do the work at the levels needed, and 3) evaluate each employee in terms of the soft skills important to placement success – we know that even the “right fit” isn’t always good enough to ensure that a temporary employee will hit the floor running. If our clients have high stakes work in play and need our temporary employee(s) to perform at high levels right out of the gate, we suggest a thorough onboarding process to get our employees up and running quickly.
It goes without saying that the days of greeting a temp, showing them their work station, lunchroom and bathrooms, and then leaving them alone to figure out what to do next, are long gone – if they ever existed. Work is much too complex, the importance of following work policies too critical, etc. to leave a temp’s orientation to chance. While temps are known for the ability to figure things out, because work environments are almost never the same, when it comes to temporary or contract workers more time needs to be spent up front, explaining all those things that are unique about you, your work environment, and your expectations of their work. In some ways, because you need/expect productivity quickly from your temporary/contract workers, the timing and importance of their orientation may even be more important than the timing and importance of the orientation you provide to your core workforce. The two orientations are, of course, quite different.
Orienting your temporary/contract employees must be done quickly and efficiently, requiring a clear roadmap or checklist of what they need to know. Here are FIVE THINGS you likely will want to cover: 1. The Circumstance – the reason why you chose to hire a temp rather than a core worker. Why does their job, even if temporary, exist? What goals must be reached in order for the employee’s work to be considered successful? You might be amazed at how important it is to share your reasons for hiring a temp instead of a core employee – it gives the temp a sense of purpose, sometimes showing them how they are both a unique and special contributor to an important team goal, “I chose to bring on as a temp, because I needed a level of skill and experience I didn’t have with my current team. Your skills are so strong in (describe) we are going to let you take the lead in those areas where that skill is needed.” A temp, who clearly knows you value them as a “contributor” if only for a short period, is an employee you can count on to go out of their way to “make a difference.” 2. Your Expectations and Priorities. “In order for our time together to be considered successful, I need you to__________________.” Define the work outcome you are trying to achieve, how success will be defined and the impact of success. Examples of goals might be, 1) “I need you to complete this project within the time frame frames we’ve discussed,” 2) “I need you to work very cooperatively with our accounting team who is watching this project with a very critical eye” or, 3) “I need you to bring any issues to my attention right away as it is important that we work through any and all problems very quickly. Senior management has their eyes on this project.”
The impact of their work is also an important element to be communicated, “This project is one of three projects we will be working on this year that are most related to our company’s ability to compete for business in South America.” 3. Explain when, how and how often they need to be checking with you. If you need quick updates at the end of each day, let them know. If you want them to stop by your office at least once a week, let them know. Knowing what you expect from them in terms of keeping you informed is a key element of placement success. We’ve seen very talented temporary or contract employees not meet our customer’s expectations simply because they didn’t know when or how often to communicate with our client. 4. Identify challenges and what they should do when they encounter them. “I want you to know you are likely to uncover challenges with_______________________. When that occurs, I want you to get help from George who knows how to push through these types of obstacles.” Fill in the blank, honestly and completely, so that your temporary worker knows what to expect and how to get issues resolved. 5. Your hiring policies. The employees’ chances of being hired. Don’t beat around the bush – implying there is a chance your temporary employee can be hired if that chance is minimal. At the same time, if the chances are good that their time as a temp is looked on as an audition for a direct hire opportunity, let them know.
Describe the policies and processes in place that allows a hiring manager to consider (or not consider) hiring a temporary employees and what they would need to do in order to be considered. If you have clear policies, you can expect your staffing vendor to have shared this information with their employee prior to their placement, but re-stating these policies during an onboarding process, is a good way to reinforce the rules. Some hiring managers will imply a higher probability of hire than actually exists as a way to keep the temporary employee motivated. In fact, just the opposite is what’s created when the offer of employment isn’t forthcoming. 
The onboarding of temporary employees is another area of managing a flexible workforce that needs careful planning and preparation. The PACE Staffing Network typically works closely with our employer clients to share the responsibility of a well engineered communication process where both PACE and our clients need to pay a role. For more information about employee onboarding and other factors important to managing a high impact flexible workforce, contact me, Kyle Fitzgerald, at kylef@pacestaffing.com. I am PACE’s Director of Business Operations and part of what I do is consult with employers on how to use temporary/flexible employees in ways that create a competitive advantage.
This article was written by Jeanne Knutzen, Founder of PACE Staffing Network, an award winning recruiting and temporary staffing agency headquartered in Bellevue Washington.
This article was written by Kyle Fitzgerald, Vice President of Recruiting Services and Solutions at PACE Staffing Network, an award winning recruiting and temporary staffing agency headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. Kyle is well known in the Pacific Northwest as an industry thought leader, and has developed and managed specialized staffing programs for companies with large footprints in manufacturing and healthcare.
This article was written by Nicholas Black, Candidate Services Manager for the PACE Staffing Network, an award winning recruiting and temporary staffing agency headquartered in Bellevue Washington. If you are interested in finding out how PACE can “make a difference” in your job search, contact Nick at candidateservices@
This article was written by Astrid Parrish, a Recruiter at PACE Staffing Network, an award winning recruiting and temporary staffing agency headquartered in Bellevue, Washington.
This article was written by Sara Bennett, Marketing Manager of PACE Staffing Network, an award winning recruiting and temporary staffing agency headquartered in Bellevue Washington.
