No matter which issue you have of Employee Turnover, Skills Gap or Chronically Open Positions or some combination thereof there will be one symptom which will exist. CHAOS will always occur when you have any of these three issues. If you have any two or if you have all three – the chaos will be exponentially worse. As you well know, the chaos will be both consistent over time and also randomly worse at times. There seems to be some cyclical nature to them but it is also a random cycle. You don’t know when you are about to hit a period of extreme chaos.
Every day you are hit with the same symptoms. What are yours? Being down 20% of a full contingent of what you need on your production lines? Losing the one welder you have to have to get things completed? Having to pay 25-35% more to a temporary agency to be able to meet that order due today? Having zero applications for your open jobs? Or having applications but none are worth hiring?
Let’s tackle one of the above issues. Too many organizations use temporary agencies as a band aid to fill the gap. There are also a lot of times when the agencies do not respond the way you need them to. One issue I hear routinely, creates much frustration for business owners and seems to be a mystery is the “lost applicant”. A client once related a story which I have heard many times before. He had sent an applicant to a temporary agency, who was supposed to put him on their payroll and send him right back. Somehow, the applicant had been offered a full time job in the meantime and therefore would not be back. I ask the client if he knew who else used the temporary agency. He said all the big companies in town used that agency.
I informed him there was a chance the applicant had not found another job but rather the temporary agency had sent him to one of their other clients. I ask my client if he had ever put a less important client off so he could cater to one of his top 5 customers. He said of course, that issue came up on a daily basis. He then realized there was a chance the temporary agency had done the same thing to him.
Temporary agencies are at best a band aid – they are never a solution. You are at the mercy of whether they can respond to reduce your chaos. The solution process is fairly simple to state - more difficult to perform. Discover the root causes and address them with a long term solution.
Do you need a guide to help reduce your chaos?
