Creating and paying for a robust consultant care program can be expensive, but not having one can cost a company millions.
According to research completed by LinkedIn, “the cost of a bad reputation for a company with 10,000 employees could be as much as $7.6 million in additional wages.”
And the effect measured in wages is only the beginning. “Nearly half of US professionals would entirely rule out taking a job with a company” whose employer brand they associate with a negative experience, according to the report. “No matter what pay raise they were offered.”
When it comes to staffing firms, your company reputation is built on how your candidates and consultants respond to your brand and talk about your company inside and outside of the workplace. In other words, your employer brand is your consultant experience. That’s why a good consultant experience matters so much to improve your reputation costs.
So how do you create a good company reputation in the marketplace? First, create a good consultant experience in the workplace.
In total, a bad consultant experience could cost your company up to $4,723 per employee hired.
Fortunately, the old methods of consultant care, with yearly reviews that only catch problems long after they’ve passed, and endless check-in phone calls that consultants never seem to answer, are going by the wayside. A good consultant care program may once have been daunting, or completely out of reach for a small firm due to the staffing cost associated with it. Now, there is talent relationship technology to assist and guide the process of good consultant care.
The automations and workflows we’ve designed at Sense can make vast improvements on even the smallest firm’s consultant experience. We’ve found that staffing firms who implement Sense are able to actually reduce the man-hours spent on consultant engagement, improve their consultant NPS scores, intervene in problems quicker, and reduce staffing costs compared with previous consultant care programs implemented at their firm.
Firms of all sizes can now create a great experience for consultants in a cost-effective way.
Before we get into the details, it’s good to explore how, exactly, a bad recruiting experience leads to a bad reputation in today’s talent marketplace.
First off, a bad experience during the hiring application process can lead a candidate to share that experience. According to Talent Board’s Candidate Experience Research report, candidates will share their negative recruitment experience with friends and family 66% of the time.
When candidates share these negative experiences, it begins the process of building a bad company reputation. And it’s not only friends and family that you need to worry about. Candidates will share negative recruiting experience online 34% of the time.
Candidates might share their experience on social media, on sites like Facebook or LinkedIn, and they might share the bad experience on job sites such as Glassdoor or Indeed.
41% of candidates say they will not work with, nor spend their money with, a company where they have a bad recruiting experience.
Building a good recruitment experience is just the beginning. Engaging with contractors once they’ve been hired is just as important when it comes to your reputation.
According to Staffing Industry Analysts Temporary Worker Survey 2017, 25% of contractors quit due to communication issues. 15% quit because the job wasn’t what they were told it was going to be, and 10% left because the pay or benefits weren’t delivered as promised.
Great candidate communication and contractor engagement are vital to make sure attrition rates stay low and your company continues to build a good reputation. When contractors quit prior to completing their assignment, that raises your staffing firm’s attrition rate and its negative reputation in the marketplace, as the contractors that leave are bound to talk about your firm online and in-person, just as your candidates will do.
Another 21% of people were dissatisfied with their interpersonal experience. 18% of people quit due to an unpleasant work environment, or they didn’t get along with managers or coworkers.
Another easy way to build a bad reputation is to not communicate with your consultants. Consistent engagement with your consultant turns the table—problems can be identified and remedied early on before consultants quit.
Now that you have a fuller understanding of the effects of a bad employer reputation, and can see how the experience of a recruiter leaks out into the world and damages your reputation, and therefore your business, let’s talk about what Sense does differently to improve the staffing consultant experience from hiring through the assignment to redeployment (or reassigning a new project).
1. Automatic check-ins
Our system can send a series of onboarding emails and text messages to contractors, to check in with them and gauge their response to the experience so far. These messages will vary depending on what stage of onboarding or work where the contractor is, what industry they are in, and what type of communication they respond to best.
The messages can be routine check-ins or include any information that is necessary to communicate with the contractor at that time.
These automated check-ins reduce the need for phone calls and time spent by managers or recruiters contacting consultants and candidates. Once this system is in place, calls will only be necessary if an employee is having an issue.
2. Personalizing emails and text messages
Emails and text messages that are sent to contractors through Sense are personalized with their name, industry, or role. Each contractor can have a personalized communication workflow. Some contractors may prefer to communicate through email, while others prefer to text. The system automatically figures this out and personalizes to each message.
The communications with the contractor can be used to check-in with how they’re enjoying their placement, gradually introduce them to the history of the company they’re working for, and provide them information about their role within the company.
3. Get real-time feedback
The automated communication allows for real-time identification of problems. By quickly identifying problems, you can quickly act to solve the problems.
The real-time communication allows your staffing firm to get real-time NPS (Net Promoter Score) measured on a continuous basis. If a low score is reported, your hiring managers and recruiters will be able to intervene and fix the problem with a personal touch. And if the problem continues to crop up, you can shift your process to alleviate the issue in future cycles.
4. Continuously measure consultant NPS
We continuously measure consultant NPS — not just once a quarter, but regularly, aggregating your NPS scores at different phases of the process.
By consistently measuring consultant satisfaction, you have time to intervene when problems arise and prevent contractors from leaving their placements early. You also don’t have to wait until the end of the quarter or the end of the year to gauge your consultant’s satisfaction and how your company’s reputation is currently perceived. You can see it measured continuously.
Consistent communication during the recruiting process and the ability to help identify problems as early as possible is what makes Sense such as asset to staffing firms. Great consultant engagement means that you stay in contact and provide a good experience for your people. When both of these things are achieved, you create a good reputation and brand for your business in the marketplace over the long term.
As we showed in the beginning, a bad contractor experience leads to a bad reputation, which simply is bad for business.
With Sense, you can easily and affordably create a great contractor experience, even as a small firm thanks to this hybrid approach. A great reputation is great for business.
If you want to learn more about how Sense can help you continuously measure contractor NPS and increase your profitability, contact us for a demo today.
