Redeployment rates at staffing firms are notoriously low. In our research at Sense, we’ve found that staffing firms fail to redeploy anywhere from 70% to 90% of their talent.
That’s not a typo. 70% to 90% of contractors recruited by a staffing firm only complete a single contract.
Improving your company’s redeployment rates is essential to building loyalty with your contractors and clients, which will make your business more successful and more profitable. Have you checked your redeployment rate recently?
Staffing firms deploy contractors or contingent workers to fill roles at companies that need talent.
When the contract ends, it’s the staffing firm’s job to redeploy contractors to another position. This process is called redeployment.
One of the major issues currently facing the staffing industry is that many contractors aren’t redeployed quickly — or at all. This leaves the contractor without a job, forcing them to seek other employment, and leading them straight to your competitors.
A staffing firm’s biggest resource is talent. Recruiting, screening, training, and deploying workers costs the firm money and time. To lose talent after one job is devastating — to your bottom line.
Here are the top four ways you can dramatically improve your redeployment rates.
You can’t fix what you don’t measure. According to a 2014 industry survey, only 5.54% of staffing firms surveyed measure the “percentage of candidates redeployed.”
That means that over 94% of staffing firms don’t even know how much talent they’re losing!
Not tracking redeployment rates robs staffing firms of valuable information. When you track redeployment rates, you know where and how you can improve. Redeployment rates can be measured company-wide or for individual clients. This is especially important to measure for your firm’s largest clients, as minor improvement can lead to major yield.
Measuring your redeployment rate is the first step to improving it.
Clear and consistent communication with your talent is one of the fastest ways to earn their trust.
Communicate to your talent everything they need to know before going to into a new job. Tell them what they’ll be doing, who they’ll be working with, the location of the job, how long they’ll be working there, and any other information that might be helpful.
The more information contractors have, the more secure and comfortable they’ll feel. This allows contracts to trust your staffing firm. When contractors trust a staffing firm, they’re more loyal.
If your talent doesn’t trust your firm, you’ve already lost them — it’s just a matter of time.
Part of building trust with your contractors comes from how and when you redeploy them. If workers complete a job and then it takes two weeks to be redeployed, they’re unlikely to stay with your staffing firm.
If a gap between jobs is unavoidable, you might consider paying contractors during that time. This enables contractors to pay their bills while you find a new placement for them — plus, as a staffing firm, it gives your talent managers an incentive to redeploy loyal contractors quickly. If this isn’t possible, be sure to plan and prepare for their next gig well before the current one ends!
Sense makes it easy to track and increase your redeployment rates. We can help your company retain great talent and redeploy them to job after job.
We’ve already helped a leading staffing firm double their redeployment rates. Now it’s time to let us help your business. All of the techniques mentioned above for raising redeployment rates are wrapped up in one piece of software with Sense, and it can be customized to fit your company’s workflows and needs.
So if you do pay attention to redeployment rates and work diligently to improve them, what can you expect to happen? Here are some happy outcomes we’ve seen from staffing firms who take the steps we listed above.
1. Improve marketability
You can use high redeployment rates as a marketing tool to prove that you have and retain great contractors. This loyalty shows companies looking to hire temporary staff that you take care of your people and have the ability to retain them.
Talk about a great statistic for marketing!
2. Increase loyalty to retain great workers
Contractors, as implied in their title, are highly flexible and mobile. In the gig economy, contractors move from one company to another. But, contractors are the most important resource for a staffing firm. That’s why retaining great talent is so important, and high redeployment rates can do just that.
High redeployment rates are an unspoken promise to contractors that your staffing firm will take good care of them. When contractors know they’ll be taken care of through quick and consistent redeployment, they’re more likely to stay.
High retention of talent will distinguish your company from the competition, and help you place your talent at all the best gigs in town.
3. Decrease cost per hire, increase profitability
High redeployment rates can also reduce your staffing firm’s cost per hire, which increases profitability.
Contractors who are consistently and quickly redeployed feel loyalty to a staffing firm and, in turn, are likely to remain with that firm for an extended period of time.
When a staffing firm isn’t constantly seeking talent, they don’t have to spend as much money on recruiting and job boards. This saves the staffing firm money and increases profitability.
4. Increase NPS scores. Higher satisfaction leads to a lot of good things.
Higher redeployment rates make for happy, loyal contractors. When a staffing firm measures its contractor NPS, this satisfaction will be evident. Higher contractor satisfaction can lead to higher retention, higher marketability, improved competitiveness, higher profitability, and decreased costs.
There are many ways to improve your redeployment rates, whether it’s communicating with contractors or redeploying talent more quickly. Improving redeployment rates can have wide ranging benefits for staffing firms, such as increased loyalty and marketability.
What gets measured gets managed — start with redeployment rates. You won’t regret it.
If you're interested in trying out Sense, request a demo today.
