Recap of Current Rule and Proposed Changes

The DOL’s current rule on the books — which was issued by the prior administration and has been in effect since January 2021 — offers a flexible standard for determining whether workers are independent contractors under federal wage and hour rules. It has helped shape today’s modern economy, as workers gain flexibility and an opportunity to work for more than one organization and businesses can adapt to shifting landscapes in light of recent labor shortages.

While the current test primarily focuses on two “core factors” — the extent of control exercised by the business over key aspects of the work and the worker’s opportunity for profit or loss — the proposed rule seeks to reinstate a rigid, multi-factor analysis. The focus will be on the “totality of the circumstances,” with an employee-friendly interpretation of how each of its six factors should be applied.

Several factors should not be surprising: the relative amount of investment made by the worker compared to investments made by the business, the permanency of the work relationship, the extent to which the work is an integral part of the organization’s business and whether the worker uses specialized skills to do the job.

PREMIUM CONTENT: Deploying IT Infrastructure in Staffing Companies

Hidden Landmines?

But where many organizations might get tripped up is with the “control” factor. The DOL’s proposal seeks to examine the nature and degree of the potential employer’s control, including legal obligations, safety standards or contractual or customer service standards that could indicate an employee relationship. While this seems like a standard factor that many organizations have grown accustomed to working with, further exploration reveals a deeper concern.

Buried in the proposal is the statement from the DOL that businesses that merely reserve the right to control certain aspects of the work — even if they don’t actually exercise that control — could be found to have an employee relationship with the worker.

Another subtle reference in the control standard is the statement that “electronic” supervision will be considered a form of control, as opposed to only considering control exercised through human interaction. This obviously is directed at app-based platforms that control service provider activities through automation. Staffing firms with independent contractor service models could be impacted as well.

Expected Impact and Next Steps

This change in rule and interpretation should cause staffing businesses to carefully review the agreements you have in place to determine whether revisions are needed. Process changes may be appropriate as well, particularly where service provider activities are tightly governed by agencies. Of course, there also may be a number of situations where contractors may need to be converted to a different status.

The DOL has announced it will accept comments from the public through November 28 before finalizing the rule. Once the agency has had a chance to review all comments, it will decide whether to revise the proposal before finalization. You can expect any such revisions to be minor in nature and not to impact the overall direction of the current proposal — and almost certainly will not sweep away the hidden landmine discussed above.

Once the process is completed, the agency will publish the revised rule, which will become the new law of the land — which you can expect in early 2023. There’s not much time to adapt to these changes, so your organization will want to start working with your staffing counsel to ensure your written agreements and management protocols are ready for what’s to come.

temporary staffing agencies in phoenix, az

The post New Independent Contractor Rule Contains Hidden Landmines appeared first on Paragon Strategic Staffing.

However, some HR departments have been resistant to move with the times. This is due to some fears of the growing pains associated with a liquid talent strategy; procurement, for example, is a common anxiety. How agile can it really be if we have to manage endless procurement processes and contract prep?

Specialized freelancing marketplaces are the solution to these pain points. These online platforms provide a pre-certified, curated selection of professionals at an organization’s fingertips, with a single point of contact for contracts and invoicing. In this post, I’ll outline the key benefits of a high-level freelancing talent strategy.

Plug the tech talent gap. New technologies are ushering in new ways of working. As the demand for digitization intensifies, companies must re-skill employees or search for specialized talent. Unfortunately, this talent is far from abundant. According to a recent study from Korn Ferry, the technology and media sector will have a global shortfall of 4.3 million workers by 2030.

To secure the best talent in a competitive market, you need to move fast. Early starters — which include some of the world’s largest corporations — are able to cover their tech talent gap with remarkable agility with the support of talent platforms.

Speedy onboarding for on-demand talent. In the past, organizations were reluctant to take on freelancers because of the administrative work involved. Then there was onboarding; how could they be confident that the freelancer would fit into the existing company culture?

Proponents of the freelancing revolution know that a freelancer is rarely a one-hit wonder. Instead, leveraging on-demand talent is the start of a long and mutually beneficial relationship. Once they’ve been onboarded, they can slot in quickly and seamlessly on a project-by-project basis.

The result? Talent when and where you need it, already armed with the knowledge of processes and protocols, for the best possible price.

PREMIUM CONTENT: Global Staffing Company Survey 2022: Front-Office and Back-Office Software: Popular Vendors, Use of Proprietary Systems, and User Satisfaction

Top talent at a low price. Gartner reported that post-pandemic, 32% of organizations surveyed said they’re using more freelancers to cut costs. This is because on-demand talent enables companies to get more done with a more flexible budget. This is particularly useful for project-based work where niche expertise can be drafted in as needed, as opposed to offering the highly competitive salary such a profile would demand.

Facilitate skill-sharing. It’s important to emphasize that cost reductions by no means lead to a reduction in quality — specialist platforms ensure that experts have verified experience.

However, this isn’t to say that full-time employees will fall by the wayside in the future. External expertise can share knowledge with internal talent and bring out the best in each team member, enabling the organization to identify hidden skills and help each employee reach their full potential.

Be ready for whatever the future throws at you. It goes without saying that the pandemic was a turning point in working cultures. The abrupt move to remote work demonstrated that resilience and flexibility were the new imperative of an unpredictable business environment. Those that were ready for the shake-up thrived, and those that weren’t fell by the wayside.

Embracing a flexible talent strategy means you’re ready for anything. A good example is managing changing expectations in regard to employee experience. For example, the Harvard Business Review found that 40% of surveyed business leaders said that young people’s desire for more flexibility and autonomy would have a significant impact on the future of work.

The Freelancing Revolution Is the Future

Looking forward, a flexible approach to talent will be what sets organizations apart. Human resources departments will have to develop new skills, but thankfully, the freelancing revolution is already well underway. Online talent platforms are making it easier than ever for companies to access freelance expertise and keep pace with new trends in the labor market.

temporary staffing agencies in phoenix, az

The post Five Reasons to Join the Freelancing Revolution appeared first on Paragon Strategic Staffing.

Not-so Mini Budget

Kwasi Kwarteng’s statement towards the end of last month saw a wealth of revelations from the Truss administration. Perhaps the greatest shock for the recruitment sector was the repeal of the IR35 regulations. APSCo has been calling for a reversal on Off Payroll or at least a review of the legislation, which we felt was simply unsuitable for the modern world of work for some time. While we were surprised at the unexpected U-turn, it was certainly testament to the success of our public policy and lobbying teams who have worked tirelessly to communicate with the relevant Ministers and Government bodies to voice the concerns of the recruitment sector on this matter.

It was also highly promising to see the recognition that a localized, sector-based skills focus needs to be prioritized to drive growth. Changes to Income Tax and the reversal of plans to increase Dividend Tax will help grow the flexible workforce once again, following a decline in contractor activity post-IR35. And while plans for immigration reviews are in the pipeline, it’s encouraging to note that the government is currently recognizing the need to bolster the country’s skills and resources.

But that doesn’t mean that the talent troubles of the UK are over. In fact, the dearth of skills is still being widely reported. And according to our latest data, talent shortages could be set to increase further in the immediate future as salary increases fail to keep up with inflation.

PREMIUM CONTENT: The Talent Platform Landscape: 2022 Update

Staff Demand Soars While Salaries Drop

When looking at APSCo’s own Recruitment Trends Snapshot, it is certainly interesting to see the changes in pay over the last few years. Looking back on August 2020, when Covid restrictions were first beginning to ease, the number of vacancies and placements across permanent and contract roles had spiked. In fact, the number of permanent jobs added between August 2020 and August 2022 increased by 48%, while contract vacancies rose by 71%. However, despite the growth in demand for staff since Covid hit the country and the current cost-of-living crisis, average permanent salaries dropped by 8% during the same period.

The data, provided by the global leader in software for the staffing industry, Bullhorn, also shows a similar picture in pre-Covid comparisons, with remuneration dropping 7% between August 2019 and August 2022. This suggests that salaries across the professional recruitment sector haven’t risen despite the record-breaking inflation rates and increased demand for talent, forcing people to look for new roles that offer them a competitive salary or a pay rise that can protect them from the rising cost of living.

Amplified Skills Struggles

The notion that the cost-of-living crisis isn’t inflating salaries is also supported by the latest ONS labor market statistics, which revealed that total pay between May and July 2022 — when adjusted for inflation — fell by 2.6%.

Increasing salaries while our economic stability is being questioned is understandably unlikely to be a priority or even feasible for many businesses, but to see a decline in pre- and post-Covid salaries is worrying. Since 2019, we’ve witnessed a demand for talent on a significant scale and an initial surge in economic activity as restrictions were lifted, but salaries across the professional, highly skilled sectors haven’t risen in line with this. The result is now being felt across the country. With the impact of Brexit also still playing out, this decline in financial incentives for new hires will only have a detrimental impact on the country’s ability to attract the skills needed to bolster the UK’s economy.

In a post-Brexit and Covid-hit economy, the strength of the labor market will be paramount to the UK’s ability to become — and, crucially, remain — a global powerhouse. While the Chancellor’s Mini-Budget demonstrated steps to help bolster the country’s labor market, more will be needed.

temporary staffing agencies in phoenix, az

The post Developing a Future-Proof Recruitment Market appeared first on Paragon Strategic Staffing.

The problem is when staffing firm owners have no clue of their acquisition costs and, as a result, invest too much into recruitment channels that don’t produce candidates and invest too little into the channels that work. On the flip side, firms that understand these numbers are more profitable and thus grow faster.

A rough calculation to find out that figure is to divide your recruitment outlays by the number of candidates attracted. However, you’re not out of the woods yet. Now that you know your acquisition cost, how do you know if it’s feasible? One way to have an idea is to look at the lifetime profit value, or how much money you’ll make over the average relationship you have with a placed candidate, and decide how much of that figure you’re willing to invest in acquiring another candidate.

Once you determine how much you’re willing to invest to acquire a new candidate and compare that to your current acquisition costs, then and only then can you optimally deploy your marketing dollars and drive down your CAC. Here are 10 ideas you can use within your staffing firm to reduce your costs to acquire candidates and subsequently improve your sales and marketing ROI.

Establish a formal referral program. Using the candidates you’ve already placed is one of the most cost-effective measures to help you find new candidates. For every referral you generate, you’ve cut your cost to acquire the original candidate in half!

Create a loyalty reward program. Loyalty programs help you differentiate, provide tangible value and fuel your word-of-mouth efforts. A program like this aimed at maintaining relationships increases lifetime value and, thus, your lifetime profit.

PREMIUM CONTENT: Online Job Advertising: 2022 Market Update

Optimize your advertising campaigns. By improving ad performance and optimizing your ads, you can eliminate wasted ad spend and allocate those funds towards attracting more candidates without increasing the budget.

Invest in training your recruiters. Implementing a training program can significantly decrease your CAC since any incremental improvement in contact or placement rates will magnify your current results.

Narrow your target audience. Focus your marketing dollars on your ideal candidates as opposed to casting a wide net.

Automate. Utilize sales and marketing automation tools so that your recruiters spend more time on high-value activities instead of menial tasks.

Nurture old or stale leads. You’ve already paid to acquire these candidates that have gone stale. Instead of considering them useless, engage them and see if they’ll reconsider your offerings.

Reduce labor costs/outsource. Keep your investment costs low by outsourcing or bringing on contract workers that execute certain tasks without being on the payroll.

Improve candidate web experience. What’s the point of traffic if it’s not converting? Upgrade your web presence so that more of your visitors find and reach you.

Retarget. Don’t consider web visitors who left your website a lost cause — run retargeting ads that follow them around the internet until they convert.

Wrapping It Up

Reducing the cost of attracting new candidates isn’t always easy, but once you’ve figured out your CAC, try these ideas as a part of your long-term strategy to reduce costs, increase profitability and grow faster than your competitors!

temporary staffing agencies in phoenix, az

The post Ten Ways to Reduce Your Candidate Acquisition Costs appeared first on Paragon Strategic Staffing.

On the outset, this trend is positive. But many of today’s enterprises still haven’t fully wrapped their heads around how to source and strategically engage our nation’s 51 million-plus independent workers.

Strategic is the operative word. Enterprises can neither holistically rely on third parties, like staffing agencies, nor can they expect managers to do double duty and find their own talent. HR is tapped with the primary focus in most organizations of leveraging FTEs.

Today’s best enterprises view access to contingent labor as a specialized sub-department and consider direct sourcing of this talent, particularly their most-in demand skill sets, to be a business imperative. Per MBO’s latest research, 88% of organizations are either actively direct sourcing or experimenting with this use, and those who aren’t doing so understand the need — they by and large just haven’t figured out the logistics.

Here are five ways direct sourcing can solve issues currently experienced by contingent labor professionals as a business case for starting or expanding use in your organization.

Greater Access to Specialized Talent

Today’s skills gaps in enterprises are greater than ever before. By building a pool of pre-vetted talent that has already been engaged with your organization, it becomes easy to find and deploy highly skilled workers when you need them. Fifty-seven percent of enterprise leaders say direct sourcing enables greater access to specialized skills. In today’s competitive market, talent have the distinct advantage of choosing the clients with whom they work. A direct sourcing program is a key way brands can firmly establish their foothold not just as an employer of choice but as a client of choice as well.

Improve Time to Onboard, Manage Turnovers and Transitions

Time to work has been a big obstacle when it comes to engaging independent workers. By creating a pool of talent that can be accessed at any time for upcoming projects, time to onboard is significantly decreased and talent is productive faster.

PREMIUM CONTENT: Fastest-Growing US Staffing Firms: 2022 Update

Manage Work Quality

It’s difficult to vet any type of talent — even FTE roles — prior to project start. But by creating a pool of directly accessible talent known, and perhaps previously engaged by your organization, the risk of trial in the unknown is greatly decreased. In fact, 56% of enterprise leaders say that direct sourcing leads to increased work quality, and 52% says it increases hiring manager satisfaction.

By shifting functions in-house — managed with your own team or a PMO led by your external  partner — managers curate, cultivate and engage networks, pools and even deployable benches of available talent, matching skill sets to current and future project opportunities. They, in turn, feel more in control of the hiring process, which leads to increased job satisfaction.

Reduce Misclassification Risk

By engaging talent via a codified program, organizations prevent rogue sourcing that both manages cost and risk. Misclassification penalties can run in the millions, and brand damage can take years to repair. This is not an insignificant reason to bring a program under thorough vetting.

Reduce Costs

Labor cost is, in today’s challenging economic climate, of course a primary concern. While 53% of enterprise leaders do say direct sourcing reduces costs, this is considered a supplemental, not primary, benefit to program creation and expansion.

temporary staffing agencies in phoenix, az

The post Five Reasons to Consider Direct Sourcing to Drive Business appeared first on Paragon Strategic Staffing.

Why People Are Resigning

The Great Resignation is the result. Two-fifths of people are unhappy with their current work and are considering leaving their job in the near future, which poses an exciting opportunity for staffing agencies that can fulfill the changing needs of today’s workers.

The main reasons cited by employees who are leaving their employer in the near future are:

• Lack of career development
• Inadequate pay
• Uncaring bosses and managers
• Their work doesn’t feel meaningful
• Their work isn’t flexible enough
• Support for well-being

Moreover, 75% of employees state that they want to work for organizations that are making positive contributions to society.

Connecting With Candidates

This provides a valuable framework for staffing agencies that are seeking to connect more deeply with candidates during the Great Resignation.

Offer clarity around career development. Firstly, make sure you and your client organizations have clear career pathways for candidates — and communicate this early on, ideally during the interview process. If vertical promotions (to managerial roles, for example) aren’t possible, look at lateral moves into other departments that will continue to stretch and challenge candidates. Nobody wants to feel like their career is going stale, so provide experiences that enable them to continuously learn and develop.

Meet Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a pyramid model that describes the motivation behind our actions. At the bottom are our basic physiological needs like food and water, financial security, wellness and safety. Then we move up the pyramid to social needs and esteem needs. At the peak of the pyramid is self-actualization, where individuals are focused on fulfilling their potential. If you cannot meet the basic needs, people will not reach the upper levels — and that’s why many people are switching jobs to more financially secure ones. In other words, cut corners at the bottom of the pyramid, and your workforce will never reach its full potential.

PREMIUM CONTENT: US Staffing Industry Pulse Survey Report: September 2022 Selected Highlights

Check in with candidates. Setting up regular, informal meetings with candidates will help you build a personal connection with them, getting to know their individual needs and passions. It will result in more successful placements and greater retention of candidates. It will also help to address the third point of why people are leaving their employers — if they feel like nobody really cares about their work, why would they stay? At the very least, if they find their current line manager isn’t meeting this need, they will turn to you, their staffing consultant, to help them navigate their next step.

Build meaningful work together. If you’re connecting with candidates regularly, you’ll begin to understand what drives them and provides meaning in their careers. This will give you a better idea of what placements will suit them, and together you’ll be able to shape a career path that doesn’t just pay the bills but also gives greater satisfaction at the end of the work day.

Focus on autonomy and flexibility. Candidates are now seeking work that can fit around other needs, like family commitments, studying or simply living with greater work/life balance. Staffing consultants need to be aware of this so they can provide opportunities that align with someone’s availability. Providing a range of opportunities for a candidate to look through can also give them the power to choose the employers and roles that best suit them.

Well-being. This ties closely with building a close relationship with your candidates — allowing you to check in on their overall well-being as well as their availability and aspirations. Ideally, your relationship will be trusted enough that if they are in a role that doesn’t suit them and is impacting their well-being, they should be able to communicate this to you for your support.

Delivering a Personal Experience

Enveloping all of this is a deeply personal working relationship with candidates that allow staffing managers to anticipate their needs and goals before sharing opportunities.

temporary staffing agencies in phoenix, az

The post How Your Staffing Agency Can Stand Out in the Great Resignation appeared first on Paragon Strategic Staffing.

“Inflation will put more pressure on chief procurement officers to manage their departments strictly within budget,” according to the Ardent Partners Annual Research Report. That said, here are some compliance pitfalls to be aware of when hiring contingent workers.

Worker classification. A common freelance hiring issue originates from a poor chain of custody around worker classification. Without legal worker classification, your organization is in danger of costly litigation. If your worker classification is outsourced to a managed service provider (MSP), they may also have outsourced this important function to a vendor management solution (VMS).

Many businesses have redistributed the responsibility of worker classification to a third party or still have paper processes in place, which is precarious and, dare I say, archaic. The party you employ to carry out worker classification won’t be in the hot seat if an audit occurs, so it’s up to you to ensure your worker classification is compliant with the law.

Selecting poor MSPs/VMSs. Poor vendor choices can happen using an outdated MSP. Many MSPs have not updated their practices to include modern technology and inevitably have inaccurate need analysis and data errors. Using inadequate MSPs and VMSs can leave you non-compliant, and may contribute to a perceived talent shortage because of their limited bandwidth in quickly and compliantly hiring contingent workers.

If your MSPs or VMSs are not adhering to the established set of guidelines laid out in their contracts, your organization is at risk for fraud, corruption and rogue spending. Dependable vendors can also be the link between you and a flowing supply of labor. Capitalizing upon what VMSs and MSPs do well while directly sourcing your own external talent could save you time and money. Tech tools allow you to sidestep low-quality recruiting services, undelivered talent quotas, questionable ethical standards and compliance risks around hiring.

PREMIUM CONTENT: The US Gig Economy — 2022 Edition

No agile workforce strategy. Smart enterprises are hiring at speed using External Workforce Management systems to minimize the effects of the talent shortage by adopting strong external hiring processes. A good process streamlines onboarding, tracks progress and compliantly pays freelancers on time.

Procurement teams can benefit from External Workforce Management to reduce risks around signing contracts, non-disclosure agreements, background checks and the long-term storage of and access to onboarding documents. Standardized procurement procedures in one central system allow internal stakeholders to know exactly what to do at each hiring stage because the system is virtually automated.

According to Deloitte, “Only 8% of respondents, for instance, said that they had established processes to manage and develop alternative workforce sources…”

Managing independent contractors compliance -at speed- can be difficult. Nonetheless, there are technological workarounds that procurement professionals can use to speed up the notoriously slow non-employee hiring process while upholding ethics, data privacy, transparency and other legal requirements surrounding employment laws.

Don’t Be Afraid to Tap Into the Gig Economy

It’s critical to hire flexible global talent to stay competitive. While communicating with external talent is more straightforward, engaging contractors for flexible work and maintaining compliance can seem overwhelming without the right innovation.

Using agile talent means you can scale your labor force during seasonal demands, contract talent to fill gaps in your teams, reduce workers during slower periods and have access to a larger talent pool.

According to Statista, “In 2021, there were about 23.9 million independent workers in the United States, an increase from 12.9 million in 2017.” Using quality External Workforce Management  can help you outmaneuver the competition with perks that include tax benefits, increased productivity, higher ROI and lowered overhead costs while providing options for increased diversity and inclusion. Advanced tech exist that works alongside your MSP and VMS, not replacing them, but enhancing the workflows around labor law compliance, worker classification, custom contracting and spend visibility — cutting out rogue, low-quality hiring practices.

temporary staffing agencies in phoenix, az

The post Compliance Pitfalls Procurement Professionals Need To Be Aware of When Hiring Contingent Workforces appeared first on Paragon Strategic Staffing.

“The redeployment trend (defined as contractors reassigned to a new engagement within one week of ending a prior one) two years ago was less than 6% and more recently has increased to between 6% and 10% amongst most enterprises,” says Colleen Tiner, SVP, product strategy at Beeline. “In talking with customers, we’ve learned the driver for the increase is largely attributed to the ability to make redeployed resources productive more quickly than new resources.”

Tiner recommends companies track their redeployment rates and take advantage of VMS features that help to increase the reuse of those workers that have demonstrated positive outcomes. There are some simple steps to improving redeployment you can try today if you are using Beeline’s VMS. Take advantage of engagement feedback and extension workflows to determine “eligibility to reengage” a month before an assignment ends so you can start discussions. When your managers open a new job, make sure you are reviewing candidates that have recently completed an assignment first (or will complete soon) — these are often presented as “Did You Know” embedded analytics.

You could also make some simple process changes. If a resource is eligible for reengagement but isn’t going to be extended, the internal team or MSP can begin to remarket that candidate within the organization as similar roles come out or automatically match that candidate with any requirements that list similar skill sets.

Magnit thinks of redeployment as the primary driver of talent mobility, which is a key to developing a more agile workforce and adapting to rapidly changing times. AI-powered technology can determine what it takes to be successful in a role and identify candidates within the client’s redeployment network who are a fit based on a comprehensive view of their skill set, past experiences and ability to learn new skills. In surfacing and ranking the best candidates within the client’s redeployment network, AI helps employers retain and broaden the skills of their talent, develop diverse talent and promote a growth mindset so critical to agility.

PREMIUM CONTENT: The US Gig Economy — 2022 Edition

Understandably, a lot of technologies have this capability in place, and the response is that it’s difficult to get hiring managers to be proactive.

Also, there would need to be considerations for an organization’s tenure policy, if they have one. But these are meaningful discussions when significant cost savings are on the line. Not only is there likely soft dollar savings from recruitment, training and on/offboarding, there is room to negotiate terms with staffing suppliers that if their candidate is redeployed, they agree to onboard those contingent workers at a payroll-plus-cost model. Since they are not marketing or recruiting the resource and likely already made a decent margin on the first project, it stands to reason they would be agreeable. It may also make sense to broker a contractual discussion with staffing firms in terms of how soon their candidates are able to be remarketed outside the organization.

Let’s think about it holistically. If you save, say, 10% per contractor on an existing direct sourcing program that captures 10% of your spend, and you save 6% on candidate reusability spend which captures 65% of your total spend, then you effectively have a 6x cost savings in your program via candidate reusability. It’s a win-win for all parties — the customer, the MSP, the VMS, the staffing vendor and the contingent worker.

While there are many ways to achieve cost savings in an organization, there is a strong business case for considering redeployment of resources as a core strategy because you benefit by retaining your highly sought-after contingent workforce while gaining efficiency and significant cost savings and increased diversity and inclusion in your contingent workforce program.

temporary staffing agencies in phoenix, az

The post Candidate Reusability – A New Approach to Direct Sourcing: Part Two appeared first on Paragon Strategic Staffing.

The rise of this on-demand talent, sourced outside of the traditional staffing firm model, uniquely allows enterprises to engage and source talent directly, typically through private or public talent pools. And while this sourcing model is considerably cheaper than paying staffing firm margins, it is not a silver bullet and likely only going to apply to a small percentage of your total talent needs. A key principle of private talent pools is that enterprises can benefit from staying connected to known talent (e.g., retirees, alumni, former interns) who can be contacted for potential contract opportunities in the future for just a little more than traditional payroll rates.

It’s not to say the self-sourcing model is irrelevant or doesn’t merit cost savings on its own, but what are companies doing to hold on to already known non-employee contractors or consultants to redeploy them proactively within the organization before they leave?

And while proponents of self-sourcing often tout that former employees and retirees are what make up these private talent pools, talent that originally came from a staffing firm is likely to be proactively redeployed to assignments at another customer. All of that internal knowledge, training and investment has been lost.

PREMIUM CONTENT: Direct Sourcing Platform Landscape

The redeployment of contract labor is arguably a much more powerful lever when it comes to benefiting from the proven quality of known resources while also gaining efficiencies in the onboarding process and cutting costs in training, management and possibly agency fees. There is also a key diversity and inclusion aspect that we cannot ignore. Rebecca Perrault, VP of diversity, equity and inclusion at Magnit, highlights this importance. “We are working hard with our clients to develop diverse contingent talent in their organizations, investing in the development of inclusion knowledge and enabling their success.  When we lose highly skilled talent at the end of their contracts, we are continually forced to start over. We need to do our best to redeploy our talent, both individuals from diverse demographic groups and all the talent we have developed, to contribute to the inclusive cultures our clients are creating.”

Click the image to enlarge.

But understanding who is onboard, when assignments will actually finish and a contingent worker’s capabilities is often difficult — even if a company has technology or services to help bring headcount and spend to light. It can be challenging to consistently understand who and where they work (especially if they are on an SOW or are project-based workers), what projects are they working on, whether these projects being delivered on time and within budget, and whether targets are being met.

As perplexing can be determining whether an assignment is actually going to be completed on the original contract end date, with close to 65% of all assignments being extended — often a week or so before the assignment is set to terminate.

But there is tremendous worth, both from cost and value to the business, in the redeployment of resources who are already familiar with your organization — people who have a proven track record of success, require little to no onboarding or training, and can add immediate value.

In part two of this series, I will explore ways to drive redeployment as a core strategy.

temporary staffing agencies in phoenix, az

The post Candidate Reusability – A New Approach to Direct Sourcing: Part One appeared first on Paragon Strategic Staffing.

So what is happening with layoffs ?

Late last month, Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, announced it was laying off some 20% of its workforce — more than 1,200 employees, CNN reported.

The interesting phenomenon is that while layoffs are bad news all around, demand for IT talent remains strong. Take H-1B visas.

One indicator of the strong demand came on Aug. 23, when US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it had received enough petitions to reach the congressionally mandated 65,000 H-1B regular visa cap and the 20,000 H-1B US advanced degree exemption, also known as the master’s cap, for federal fiscal year 2023.

According to uscis.gov, H-1B is a nonimmigrant classification that allows people who are not US citizens to work in the States in positions that require a degree of high-level specialty knowledge. Previously, the USCIS had announced it received 483,927 H-1B registrations in March for federal fiscal year 2023, up from 308,613 in fiscal year 2022.

“It really reflects the extraordinarily level of demand for talent,” said Mark Roberts, CEO of the TechServe Alliance. He noted the number of registrations is up 57% year over year.

One note on the process: The initial electronic registration selection process was completed in March, and the USCIS conducted a random lottery to select the 127,600 registrations it estimated would be needed to meet the visa cap. The Society for Human Resource Management reported the USCIS selects more petitions than needed to fill the cap to account for employers who don’t follow through on the petition process as well as cases that are denied or withdrawn.

PREMIUM CONTENT: US Staffing Industry Forecast: September 2022 Update

H-1Bs aside, other indicators also point to strong demand for tech talent.

“Many IT consultants that work through IT staffing companies are still receiving multiple offers,” Roberts said. “Despite a few stories of layoffs and hiring freezes among some high-profile tech companies, overall demand for technical talent still significantly outstrips supply. So even if there is some slackening of demand in a particular industry, there are other sectors that will gladly absorb those IT professionals.”

The unemployment rate in IT (as of end of Q2) was approximately 2%. And the TechServe Alliance’s IT index shows overall IT employment has remained flat for the past year because of a lack of supply.

Our research at SIA shows growth in IT staffing has recently been particularly strong. There is talk of possible moderation in that growth, but those forecasts still see the market as strong.

Where do you see the IT market heading? Send me an email with your thoughts at cjohnson (at) staffingindustry (dot) com.

temporary staffing agencies in phoenix, az

The post The IT Conundrum: High Demand for Skills Amid Layoffs appeared first on Paragon Strategic Staffing.