Blog

How to Reduce Staffing Costs

06.16.10

Paul Spiegelman, Founder & CEO of The Beryl Companies asks:
What are some creative ways to reduce the overall costs associated with temporary or contract employees?

Try designing a thorough staffing plan that identifies your current business initiatives and outlines the exact type of talent needed to meet those objectives effectively. Then, perform a staffing audit of the current temporary employees and compare their qualifications and productivity to your core workforce. Using those tools can increase the quality of work, optimize output and reduce your overall cost of employees.

When I meet with clients, one of the first conversations we have is about their current use of staffing firms. We review the time it takes to fill their requests, quality and cost. Too often I find that clients are unhappy with the quality of contract workers being sent to them, but married to a specific staffing firm because of a low bill rate. Most of these clients could actually cut costs by designing and developing a staffing plan that identifies their current business objectives and establishes the staff needed (both temporary and core employees) to meet those objectives on time. At Delta Dallas, we specialize in the development of streamlined staffing plans. We increase the return on our clients’ staffing dollar and reduce attrition through targeted analysis.

A staffing audit will accurately compare the productivity of your core workforce to your temporary workforce. We measure key variables, analyze discrepancies and make recommendations based on our findings. Some of these areas could include:

1. Level of education
2. Salary comparison
3. Full-time job description vs. Temporary job description
4. Requisite skills required to reach peak production levels
5. Any other variables relevant to your production and company initiatives

When temporary staff fails to perform at the level of an organization's core employees, production suffers. Most of the time, we have found that this is due to the bill rate negotiated with the staffing agency. The lower the bill rate, the less skill you will have in your temporary staff. There is a marked difference in a $10.00/hr employee and a $15.00/hr employee.

This problem is two-fold. First, companies often believe that the best way to reduce their staffing costs associated with temporary help is to drive down the bill rate as low as possible. The other side of this issue is created by the staffing companies themselves. Most staffing companies work to increase volume with their new or existing clients. They lower cost, which in turn lowers quality. You then need more temporaries to produce less work and attrition becomes an issue.

At Delta Dallas, your objectives are our highest priority. We merge your staffing initiatives with your company vision to bring quantifiable results.


Debbie Trevino
Partner and Chief Strategy Officer
Delta Dallas
STAFFING SERVICES



posted by Rachel Meador on 06.16.10 • comments (0) • Staffing Services