One of the most expensive problems faced by almost every staffing firm is turnover. Turnover is expensive, leading many to seek a solution.
The first solution many firms try is to roll out a high-touch contractor care program. Unfortunately, high-touch contractor care is also expensive, not to mention time consuming to design, roll out, and continuously manage.
Is it possible to reduce contractor churn and deliver great contractor care without overburdening your staff and budget? We think it is.
So what’s the secret to creating a successful low-touch contractor care program? Make every touch count.
Each time you reach out to a contractor, make the touch meaningful, listen to their responses, and learn to read between the lines to identify problems before they get too big. Training your contractor care staff to make each touch count can help to reduce costs as well as turnover.
Follow these tips to make every touch count, and design the most affordable low-touch contractor care program.
When and how you touch base with individual contractors should be conducted using a repeatable process.
Each contractor that comes into your staffing firm will follow the repeatable process as they apply for and work jobs. For each stage of that journey, decide when to check in. Much of this is common sense, but here are a few suggestions.
Collaborate with your team to decide when the best time for check-ins is for you. Look for the times when a contractor will need your support the most.
Personalizing your messages can go a long way. Are you using the contractor’s first name in each email and text message? You may already have each contractor’s birthday and start date stored in in your system. Why not send them a message? Each extra touch will make contractors feel welcome and valued.
To go above and beyond, encourage your contractor care team to add their personal sentiment to messages. Get to know the contractors, and don’t be afraid to ask how their day went.
Adding some personalization to each message, even if automated, is a low-cost, high-value way to let your contractors know that they’re an important part of your team.
Listening costs your staffing firm nothing but time. Sending out a message to contractors asking for feedback or about their first day is a crucial, but often missed, step in any good contractor care plan.
If someone had a rough first day, ask why. Find out what went wrong and see if there’s anything you can do to make it better—often, this will reveal inefficiencies in your repeatable process (see #1). Maybe the contractor didn’t know where to park, or their manager didn’t have their materials ready for them. Be sympathetic, but also offer resources to solve the issue. And then tak steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again in the future.
When listening to contractors, it’s also important to learn how to read between the lines. With Sense’s software, it’s simple to send out a post-first day message asking for the contractor to rate their experience between 0 and 10.
Once you receive that NPS score, you need to try to understand why they have that score. If the contractor responded with anything below a 7 and didn’t offer explanation, reach out to them. Send a text, email, or call them to discover why they gave that rating. This follow-up is extremely important, especially when the contractor scores a 4 or below.
Having a process that is personalized and responsive is key, but automation is the engine that drives low-touch contractor care. The most affordable way to improve the contractor experience and and reduce turnover is to set up strategic automations.
A talent engagement platform like Sense will replace routine tasks such as follow-up messages, NPS surveys, and manual messages that offer resources and information. Automating these messages allows your contractor care team to focus on connecting with talent at key moments.
Sense also enables you to create smart workflows for each stage of the contractor lifecycle. If you also use data already in your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to personalize these messages, it will still have the feel of a personal touch, but without less burden to your team and your contractor experience overall.
Finally, Sense alerts your team when things go wrong—when negative feedback comes in, when really bad NPS scores are received, and when the unexpected happens. That way you can respond to it in an agile fashion, without worrying about what else will fail while you address the issue.
Your contractor care program doesn’t need to be expensive, nor does it have to be high-touch. The secret to an affordable, low-touch contractor care program is to build a repeatable process, personalize contractor communications, and use automation to scale your team’s capabilities.
If you’re interested in automating your communication with contractors and implementing an affordable low-touch contractor care program, you can try a demo of Sense today.
