With all the technological, marketing, and political changes worldwide, several businesses are seeing forward. In essence, they are predicting what lies ahead and preparing themselves to face any possible scenario. Therefore, the future of staffing companies is also an interesting conversation topic that must be addressed.
In this article, you will learn all you need to know about the future of staffing companies. Here, you will discover the challenges staffing companies will face soon and how they must deal with them. We will allow you to do this by talking about the following topics:
- What is a staffing company?
- What challenges are going to face staffing companies in the near future?
- Why is it important for staffing companies to deal with these challenges?
- Where can I find more information about the future of staffing companies?
1. What is a staffing company?
Most companies have a clear sense of what type of employee they need for productivity and efficiency. However, knowing what you want is one thing, but how to get it is a totally different topic.
Finding the right person for the job can be challenging for you. This is more accentuated today when your company has to use additional strategies to be more attractive to future employees. Moreover, additional strategies regarding staffing have to be well thought out, ensuring you are offering the right advantages to potential candidates. In other words, it is a process that takes a lot of time and effort nowadays.
This is where staffing firms come to help you. They provide staffing services that include recruitment assistance, help with the design and development of recruitment strategies, and more. In essence, they will take a big amount of workload from your HR department. All of this while using their knowledge and expertise to find you the right candidate for the job.
2. What challenges are going to face staffing companies in the near future?
With fast changes and the continuous evolution of markets around the world, most businesses are now working on predicting the future. Their goal is to plan and execute the correct moves to take advantage of these changes and stay profitable.
Staffing companies worldwide are performing this exact same activity. However, economic, political, and technological changes affected this business in a singular matter. That is to say, recruitment is a process evolving at a fast pace. Therefore, companies need to be prepared beforehand to remain in business. Doing so requires knowing which challenges lie ahead for them.
Now, predicting these challenges depends mostly on the projected situation of the place where your staffing company is located. Nonetheless, we find six challenges that staffing firms will face in the near future, regardless of their location. These challenges have also a huge impact on the global staffing trends, some of which can already be seen today.
Let us now show you these six challenges that staffing companies will have to face in the not so distant future:
2.1. Clients’ shortage
The COVID-19 pandemic affected all businesses in a severe matter. As a result, they all had to endure an economic impact at all levels. Hence, costs reduction rose to be a top priority in most companies and organizations.
Staffing companies see this as a major problem in the immediate future. It means that they most probably could find less demand for their services. After all, staffing services are classified as outsourcing, which puts them first in the line for expenses decrease.
Furthermore, it is the same case for staffing companies with existing clients. Financial difficulties can make customers unable to pay for staffing services on time, or at all.
To face this challenge, staffing companies can go to insurance companies for help. They will have the capability of covering them in the event any client contracts are broken. Marketing strategies can also be beneficial to face the reduced demand.
On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic also created a booming market for contract or temporary staffing. In this matter, working with a temporary staffing agency can improve your situation tremendously.
2.2. Working remotely
Another change boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic is the shift toward work-from-home setups for many employees globally. Thus, it is right to state that remote work arrived here to stay.
Staffing companies will face this challenge from two fronts, their candidates and their clients. When it comes to candidates, remote work altered the recruitment process completely, bringing to the table remote interviews.
Now, you may see the possibility of interviewing candidates remotely as positive, but it also comes with its difficulties. Logistics, technology, and time-zone differences are some of the aspects staffing firms will have to consider when evaluating candidates online.
On the other hand, clients of staffing companies are too shifting to perform their onboarding processes remotely. This may bring troubles to your selected candidates due to a lack of in-person introductions.
Staffing agency software is a proper tool to face this challenge. It will allow you to have better remote control of candidates’ recruitment and clients’ requirements. However, it can be complex to handle the activities that involve managing staffing remotely.
2.3. Workforce diversity
For people around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic also brought with it a problem: unemployment. Financial difficulties and a lower market’s demand ended in a big number of layoffs in all companies.
As a result, staffing companies are now dealing with wider candidate pools with a higher diversity in them. This looks like an advantage in the business, but it is not an easy challenge to address at the beginning.
Gender and racial biases that exist in professional contexts must be overcome to use workforce diversity in your favor. Once you have done it, you can use remote work to achieve even greater diversity in your workplace.
Remote work can also help you to deal with another diversity topic: location. Before technology would arrive at this point, a skilled candidate could be rejected based solely on their home’s location. Remote work erased this, allowing workers who live in rural areas to work for companies with city offices. You may think dealing with a wider candidate pool can be difficult for staffing companies. But recent analysis show that expanding your candidate pool can be a good idea.
2.4. Employment based on skills
In the days before the pandemic began, academic background and past experiences were the most important characteristics searched in candidates. Now, the reality in the staffing business is substantially different for the first of the two.
Companies are now assessing employees more regarding what they do, instead of what they know. In other words, they follow an employment most based on skills, and not on academic achievements. Therefore, the behavior of potential candidates, and not their knowledge, is becoming a major focus for staffing companies worldwide. This has changed the demand for higher education in students, who now seem more interested in starting a job quickly.
Hence, staffing companies must find new methods to evaluate potential candidates beyond the traditional ones, such as analyzing their resumes. In this matter, personality tests, evaluation of candidates’ soft skills, and a deeper analysis of their career trajectory may come in handy. Once on the job, new employees brought by staffing companies must be evaluated. It is important to note that you must also evaluate temporary employees in order to know if they really fit the position.
2.5. Employee benefits
Last but not least, the COVID-19 pandemic modified the requirements employees demand from companies. Their main focus now is on better employee benefits. As a result, potential candidates are following this trend. Therefore, staffing companies can now expect to receive questions from their candidates regarding the flexibility a job offers beyond the salary.
Thus, the target of these questions may most probably be on health benefits, such as mental health benefits, annual leave, and guaranteed sick pay. This challenge is one main focus for staffing companies’ clients.
However, staffing firms can give clients recommendations about how to fulfill these demands, to avoid losing potential great new employees. Offering higher employee benefits is a good way of increasing motivation among your workers. Nevertheless, when it comes to remote employees and temporary staff, you may need more than just that.
2.6. Cultural fitment
Another aspect on which staffing companies must make more emphasis in the future is cultural fitness and employee values. In this matter, they must also advise clients about transforming their working environment into one where diverse people feel comfortable.
This is more important when the positions that need to be fulfilled have the potential to become long-term full-time positions. In other words, cultural fitment is now applying more to businesses than talent. You can also work with a consulting agency to modify your working environment. But, you must keep in mind that consulting and staffing are not the same concept.
3. Why is it important for staffing companies to deal with these challenges?
In nowadays business world, companies that fail to evolve and adapt to the market’s fast changes often tend to get behind. Moreover, you can have a large list of clients and a good services record and still be overcome by one of these challenges if you fail to address them.
Your main goal here is to prepare your staffing company to endure any changes future may bring. You can even allow your company to end stronger if your assessment of these challenges is adequate.
Therefore, take the time to analyze which projections your location has for the future days ahead, and set up strategies to be prepared for any eventuality. This way, you will ensure your continuity in the staffing business.
4. Where can I find more information about the future of staffing companies?
The future may look exciting but also can look scary. However, staffing companies must not panic about this. All of these challenges have several ways to be addressed, and they can even be seen as opportunities. So, see the future as a sea of endless possibilities, and make your moves.
You may need the services of a staffing agency to help your company from another business branch deal with these future challenges. On Connect Staff, we believe in doing meaningful work for you, by providing the staffing services you or your company require now, tomorrow, and beyond.
Do you have some questions about staffing services? If that is the case, you can contact us to obtain more information about how we can help your business, by calling us at +971 43 316 688. You can also email us at contact@connectstaff.ae, to talk with one of our representatives who will answer all your questions.
On The Talent Point, we have many job offers for you to help your search for your dream job. Apply for one today by going to thetalentpoint.com. You can also send your resume to contact@thetalentpoint.com.