Today is a very sad day for me – I just found out that Melba, the token booth clerk at the Bowling Green 4 and 5 Subway Station, has left the MTA. I am heartbroken.
Most people don’t notice the token booth clerk as they leave the subway but Melba is hard to ignore. Every morning as the hordes of people exit the turnstiles and rush to the escalator on their way to work Melba would greet the crowd with a cheery and loud “GOOD MORNING EVERYONE, HAPPY THURSDAY! HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY.” She would do it all the time. It made people smile – every time.
I can’t tell you how often I have seen serious faces break into smile as a result of Melba’s greetings. Or the number of complete strangers who would have conversations with each other praising Melba’s cheeriness. I even remember two people in the elevator of my office complaining about the “imposter” when Melba was out.
The great thing about Unemployment Insurance is that it provides concrete pressure to keep our people working and to only place people with whom we can see having a long term relationship. The more people we have receiving unemployment benefits, the higher rate we pay for the insurance. So we are more profitable when we can keep people working and when we are diligent in our hiring of only people who we can keep working. There are two ugly realities that come with this important benefit:
In a down economy, we have more people out of work and fewer opportunities. This essentially increases our costs as our opportunities decrease, putting considerable pressure on our profitability.
There are those employees who deliberately avoid getting placed with the hope of continuing to receive unemployment benefits that are not deserved.
Regarding the first issue – That is just the way things are in the temporary staffing and consulting world. It is a cyclical industry and we need to store some of our summer harvest for the inevitable winter. Yet the second causes me real agitation. Now most Wall Street Services employees are very honorable about this and are looking to work, but there are a small few who actively avoid work while collecting unemployment.
A couple of days ago I got an e-mail from the American Staffing Association urging me to contact my Representative and Senators and “Tell them to vote ‘no’ when the bill comes up for a final vote.”
Now, let me be clear, I do not think this blog is an appropriate place to discuss the merits of health care reform. One, it is too much of a hot button issue for discussion here and two, I am not educated enough on the matter to post a blog that would comprehensively cover the topic. I do understand the fear that must be present in this industry surrounding health care legislation. Regardless of how you come out on this issue I am sure that you would agree that for a temporary staffing firm the thought of adding an additional annual cost of $2000 per employee (that you do not know if you can recover) would be a daunting position.
Last post I wrote about how in the midst of this economic recovery companies are adding and keeping temporary workers and consultants in lieu of making direct hires. Within the financial services sector I suspect that this trend will continue well into the recovery.
Before the economy crashed, we had a client who had a particularly interesting philosophy of hiring. The principals of this small fund realized that they needed a significant amount of flexibility with their business and therefore their employees. If they needed to change their investment strategy they wanted to be able to do so and quickly bring on employees who had experience in implementing the new strategy. Out of 7 employees, 2 were the Fund’s principals and the rest were Wall Street Services employees. On at least one occasion they were able to make significant staff changes and be up and running in under two weeks complete with analysts and accounting professionals who had the specific expertise to meet their new objectives.
Last Friday, employment numbers came in and the number of individuals under the temporary-help service sector increased for the fifth straight month. This is not surprising; in fact it is a typical response to the tail end of a recession. At the beginning of a downturn, companies stop using temporary workers before layoffs, but as things pick up they realize they’ve cut too deep and hire temporary workers to meet the needs of their growing business until they are able to hire full-time roles.
Last post I discussed a relationship with a client that is very expressive of their appreciation of what we provide and how that translates into Wall Street Services working harder on their behalf. I contrasted that with our experience with our large clients who outsource the management of their temporary staffing to a Vendor Management Solution provider (VMS.) It is my experience that the very nature of the VMS client relationship is antithetical to Staffing Companies having an experience of being appreciated. VMS providers are hired to improve efficiency and reduce cost and they do so by interacting with their Vendors as if they are providers of a commodity. As they are not part of the company they are managing staffing for they also do not have sufficient access to the information necessary to have their staffing vendors really successful.
I just came back from a client meeting that was incredibly invigorating. The client is a European Bank and I must say I would run through a brick wall for them.
Why? Well, they appreciate our efforts and they are expressive about their appreciation.
This simple act results in huge dividends for this client. We are constantly searching for ways to make the lives of our contacts at this bank easier. Recently, we’ve been putting together profiles of the divisions within the bank that use the most temp staffers. These profiles allow us to get a better grasp of the type of employee who is most likely to be successful in a role there. These profiles minimize turnaround time of resume submission as well as time spent describing the needs of the department and skills/experience required for placement there. We’re even able to streamline our billing process, and because of the ease with which we’re able to work with this client, we find ourselves prioritizing their orders above all others.
Now of course we do all we can for all of our clients but with this European Bank our efforts come more naturally. Because I know they appreciate our efforts, I think of them more often in a good light. And because I think of them more often, I come up with more ideas about improving their experience with Wall Street Services. And because they like it when I do things for them, I am eager to implement my ideas. All of this leads to them being more appreciative and the cycle continues.
Now if I compare this experience with some of our large multinationals who outsource the management of their temporary staffing program to separate Vendor Managers, it is a very different experience. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published an article on converting temporary positions in to full time opportunities entitled “Making a Temporary Stint Stick.”
The article has some good points but respectfully misses some important steps in this process.
Nic Askew, a film maker I know, sent an e-mail a while ago asking for introductions to leaders to interview for his films. Rightly so, Nic is very concerned with the lack of leadership shown in this country and wanted to make it a theme in his next series of films. Particularly he wanted to highlight the aspects of leadership that are more elusive and often overlooked.
This is the first in his series on leadership. I was moved by it and wanted to share.
Ok, long time since my last post. It was a wonderfully busy January which, frankly, took me by surprise. Last January it was so quiet I thought the phone would never ring again. Which is decidedly NOT the case now. I am very grateful.
An acquaintance wrote this Business Week article entitled “Why Victims Can’t Invent Anything.” I loved the article and have been thinking about it a lot. The premise is that innovators see failure as an opportunity and, in fact, failure is the catalyst of innovation. Particularly after such a rough economic climate, this rings true with me.