A Case For Change Management

Download The 5 Tips For Institutionalizing Change Infographic Here

Egos and lack of objectivity can be destructive to any organization. Each can stand in the way of progress and the implementation of new ideas just as much as not having the right mix of customers, poor strategy, lack of a realistic business plan and lacking the right people to execute those plans.

• Is your staffing firm seeing a decline or even the same number of month-over-month interviews, offers, and starts no matter what you do tactically or strategically?
• Are consultants ending assignments and new contractors placements are simply replacing those who ended an assignment?
• Are your internal recruiting teams workflows disjointed, manually intensive and inefficient resulting in bottlenecks from when a job order is released by your customer and the recruiting team produces its first candidate submission?
• Are your recruiters continually hearing from candidates they are contacting that they were already called by a competitor for the same job your team is recruiting on?
• Is your recruiting leadership ill equipped to recognize or admit their own shortcomings, lack of experience or just simply in self-denial of their own limitations?
• Have you established baseline key performance indicators (KPIs) for each experience level for your recruiters day-to-day activities so that they really know what they are accountable for achieving?
• Do your recruiters truly understand how they personally impact top and bottom-line revenue through solid rate negotiations with the candidates they recruit?

Non-existent repeatable processes, recruiter training, rigorous job order management and lack of efficient workflows can make or break a staffing firms goal to increase revenue and profits. Leading, mentoring, coaching and effective training of a recruiting organization that focuses on the recruitment of highly talent in an extremely competitive market demands that staffing firm owners continually seek to eliminate inefficient processes. This is not a one and done philosophy.

The continual need to identify opportunities to test and implement meaningful change that impacts financial performance must be a daily ritual. Staffing firm owners and their recruiting leadership need to objectively assess and improve every process that touches the candidate experience. After all isnt or shouldnt the organizations common goal be to maximize and increase productivity that will result in more contractors obtaining interviews, offers and starts monthly?

Sometimes egos can stand in the way of whether a staffing firm is really able to double their revenues and if they really have the fortitude to undertake a complete assessment of how change management through process improvement will increase productivity and organizational performance.

New perspectives for how to achieve greater success boils down to evaluating how we have always done it, to adapting and implementing new recruiting ideas designed to drive greater return-on-investments. Teams can be improved by stripping away layers that do not add value. It often means changing the mindset from the old way to this is how we will grow. This shift in thinking will facilitate the changes necessary for scalable, profitable growth.

None of us is as good as we think we are. R. Angelo Feher

As the CEO or President of a staffing firm you bare all the risk. Your employees dont always understand all you have invested over your professional lifetime in growing your firm and its reputation. Unless people who work for you are stakeholders and have a vested interest in your firms short and long-term growth objectives they will never know what it is like to walk in your shoes.

Often those charged with driving the recruiting organizations performance are not interested in hearing, let alone learning, what aspects of their day-to-day recruitment strategies are inefficient and what performance improvements can be achieved. It is human nature to protect ones territory and become defensive when questioned about how they manage their team. Unsubstantiated objections that nothing is broken, there is nothing that needs to be corrected or changed and that an outsider is not qualified to make improvement recommendations are typical reactions. Unless recruiting management agrees that the staffing firms current performance can be improved through an objective assessment focused on driving greater productivity gains, scalable profitable growth is not possible.

So, here are my five tips for accepting change and institutionalizing it in the workplace:

1. Acknowledge that change is necessary.

Look for opportunities to grow, streamline and adopt new ideas across the organization. Analyze empirical data, existing workflows and processes, and determine where changes need to be made to maximize performance and remove unnecessary layers. Acknowledging change is the first step to allowing it to happen; allowing for increased positive outcomes without resistance.

2. Accept that change is inevitable.

As businesses grow, technology changes, buyers of staffing services adopt new ways for how they procure staff augmentation contingent workforce, bill rates are compressed, pay rates are higher, reduced margins are inevitable, and the need to do more with less is the new norm. The acceptance that strategies and processes must change as well needs to be the new norm. What worked a few years ago or even last year to get you to where you are today, is very likely not going to get your staffing firm where you want it to be at the end of 2016. In order to grow we must be receptive to the changes that are necessary and have the rigor to execute.

3. Learn from experience.

Once you embrace change, you will start learning from it. Treating change as a life lesson rather than an obstructive force is the key to your future growth. Change is fluid and needs to be an ongoing daily and not a one-time event.

4. Realize your growth potential.

Evaluate your firms current situation and look for opportunities to grow. Start by identifying immediate opportunities for growth and move forward to future opportunities. The ability to realize your potential is what separates the $100 million + companies from the $1 million companies.

5. Embrace changes and excel.

Finally, embrace the changes and become obsessed with your firms growth. This needs to be the mantra across your leadership team. The status quo and inevitable need for constant evaluation for how to maximize individual contributor performance and their success is what has fueled the staffing industrys most successful firms. Your firm may grow over a long period of time, but the likelihood of remaining stagnant due to being unreceptive to change often dictates which staffing firms survive and grow to their fullest potential.

Download The 5 Tips For Institutionalizing Change Infographic Here