5 "SMART" Ideas on Staffing Competition
By: Don Catino, Principal
You have worked hard to discover and retain a group of world-class staffing partners to deliver the hard-to-find talent your business needs to succeed. You finally have a select group of staffing professionals who take their careers seriously, and servicing you and your company are their top priority. They have been trained, they follow your rules, and they are delivering results. Awesome!
So why is it so S.M.A.R.T for you to make them compete for your business again and again?
1.) Strategic: Always Be Looking for Your Next #1 Staffing Partner!
In this business, agencies come and go all the time. For contingency, even if you’re content with your current suppliers, it is good business sense to build relationships with potential new partners. This will give you access to the latest industry information, program offerings and viewpoints – ones you may not have considered or even known about. Knowledge is power and when you know where your next #1 is coming from – you’ll always be in control of your vendors and never the other way around.
2.) Motivational: Keep Vendors Respectful of Your Opportunity
When your staffing partners know they are going to be formally evaluated and re-competed at specific intervals – it keeps them on point – eliminating any sense of entitlement or complacency. Competition motivates your partners to adhere to your rules and eliminates ‘rogue behavior’. Competition ensures your staffing partners will evolve with you – or risk their spot to a new agency that will.
3.) Accountable: Get More from Top Performers – Eliminate Laggards
Regular competition helps you formerly evaluate your staffing partners against the KPIs and metrics that are most important to your ever-changing business needs. This process ensures your agencies will keep up and remain in sync with your business over the long haul. Competition identifies your best performers – allowing you to pull them in and keep them fully engaged. Competition can even help you ‘break up’ with long-standing vendor relationships that may have become non-productive… without having to be the bad guy.
4.) Relationship: Is This What You Signed Up For?
When your staffing partners have mergers, make acquisitions or get outside investment – it can have negative impact on their ‘perceived value’ of you as a client. Likewise, turnover of key recruiters and account managers at your agencies can drastically change the quality of service you receive. The bottom line: frequently, last year’s top performers become this year’s laggards. Regular competition is your lens into these ‘drifts’ and puts you in control to do something about it.
5.) Technology: Adopted … or Not?
Advances in A.I., Machine Learning and Big Data are creating new staffing tools that drive massive gains in efficiency and value – but only if your agencies adopt them. To win the ‘War for Talent’ you need vendors that are early adopters and super users of the latest tools and services. Competition is your opportunity to compare the quality, speed and service delivery of your partners – ensuring you the best of breed for your specific needs.
So there you have it, 5 SMART reasons to evaluate your staffing partners on a regular basis. Sure, it can be a lot of work, but the value you’ll receive is enormous! Like this idea, but aren’t sure where to go from here? Give us a call at 603-772-2700 or contact us!
