ABR Blog

Admittedly, it may be a little early to light a Yule log. 

But if you’re in the customer service, administrative/clerical, hospitality, shipping/delivery, inventory or technology/finance industries, you’re probably headed for a busy – if not your busiest – time of year.  If you’re going to require extra help this holiday season, it’s definitely not too early to plan for your staffing needs.

Here are just a few reasons why:

• Prevent rash hiring decisions.  If you wait until the last minute to recruit and hire, you may find yourself “up against a wall” when business suddenly surges.  Waiting until your needs are urgent may force you to make hasty hiring decisions.
• Get a jump on your competitors.  Many companies will wait until next month to gear-up.  Why not start your efforts now and reach the most qualified candidates before other seasonal employers get them?
• Avoid being overwhelmed.  This year’s seasonal job market will be flooded with applicants.  With so many job seekers competing for positions, the sheer volume of résumés and applications may bog you down.  Give yourself as much time as possible to find the best candidates by starting the search process early.

If just reading about seasonal hiring makes your stomach churn, relax – you don’t have to do it alone.  Staffing firms specialize in helping companies like yours effectively manage the highs and lows of business cycles.  Plan your workforce needs now with your staffing partner to:

• Get the flexibility you need.  Seasonal on-time staff (temporaries) can handle surges in demand without impacting fixed expenses.
• Say “goodbye” to post-holiday layoffs.  Since the staffing service is the seasonal employees’ employer of record, you can avoid the hassle and expense of letting workers go once things slow down.
• Access the talent you need, right when you need it.  Planning your workforce needs now gives your staffing firm time to locate the most qualified staff for you, especially when you require a large number of workers – so they’re available right when you need them.
• Shorten learning curves.  Your staffing provider will recruit seasonal workers with the specific skills and experience you require.  The provider can also, at your request, develop customized orientation materials to help reduce training costs and get workers up-to-speed more quickly.
• Eliminate additional administrative and legal burdens.  By using on-time (temporary) employees, you avoid the social security, payroll and other tax and legal burdens associated with seasonal employees.  Freedom from these hassles will give you more time to focus on other important priorities.
• Cut back on overtime.  On-time (temporary) employees help you minimize the additional cost and burnout overtime causes.

Plan Your Workforce Needs with ABR Employment Services

If your business has frequent or predictable surges in demand, a planned staffing option may be right for you.  Planned staffing is the strategic use of on-time employees (temporaries) to accommodate workloads known to vary in seasons or other cycles.

First, an ABR Employment staffing expert will work with you to examine year-round fluctuations in workload and identify peak demand periods.  Next, we will create a customized staffing plan for your business that: provides on-time (temporary) employees to handle your busiest times; reduces or eliminates your need to lay off employees during slow periods; frees you to focus on the most critical parts of your job.

Remember, the early bird gets the worm – it’s never too early to discuss your staffing needs with ABR Employment Services.

Ever feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information coming at you each day?

With the barrage of data pouring in from newspapers, TV, the internet, social media, RSS feeds, e-mails, voicemails and good-old-fashioned face-to-face meetings, finding the critical information you need amidst all the “white noise” can be exhausting.

Take the BLS Monthly Employment Situation, for example.  It contains monthly employment estimates for over 1,000 industries from its Current Employment Statistics program.  However, the changes in these overall employment levels tend to be delayed in the monthly labor reports – making it a lagging indicator of economic trends.

Sound like a lot of white noise?

Not entirely.  Temporary help employment numbers, which are part of the monthly BLS report, are generally considered to be a coincident indicator for overall employment.  This means that changes in temporary help employment tend to forecast subsequent changes in overall employment and coincide with changes in economic activity.  Why?  Many companies use temporary staffing as a means to quickly adjust their operations to meet fluctuating demands for their products and services.

Here’s how to get current data for temporary help services in the BLS report:

1. Go to the BLS Current Employment Statistics home page.
2. Then select either the HTML or PDF version of the “Employment Situation Summary.”
3. Data for temporary help services can be found in Table B-1 (page 30 of the report’s PDF version).

 Effectively manage the economy’s highs and lows with ABR Employment Services.

Our full spectrum of staffing services for Wisconsin employers can help you run lean – while providing on-demand access to the talent you need to meet surges in demand.

Keeping your résumé current is important to your continued career development.  But unless you’re actively looking for a job, the daily demands of life, home and work can easily push this updating process down on your priority list.  If you haven’t reviewed your résumé in over a year, here are just a few good reasons why you should take a fresh look at it:

• Even if you’re currently employed, you never know when an attractive job opening may present itself.  A current résumé can help you capitalize on an unexpected opportunity – before someone else has the chance.
• Over time, your important achievements and contributions may be forgotten.  Regular updating ensures that critical, measurable accomplishments are accurately recorded.
• In many cases, your résumé creates a first and lasting impression on a potential employer.  Make sure it’s a good one.  By periodically reviewing and honing your résumé, you can create a more powerful marketing tool that accurately and favorably represents you as a professional.

Use these tips to make your résumé update simple and comprehensive:

1. Review personal information (address, e-mail, LinkedIn URL, etc.) to ensure everything is up-to-date.
2. Review your oldest job.  If it’s no longer relevant, and you have at least 10 years of documented work history without it, remove it.
3. Update your responsibilities and accomplishments.  Consider the following:  special projects; new expertise developed or job responsibilities awarded; knowledge or skills enhancement from special training or professional development; awards or other recognition; challenges you faced and solutions developed; measurable results you helped achieved (e.g., eliminating process inefficiencies, increasing productivity or sales, improving staffing or operational performance, etc.).
4. Revist your objective statement.  If it is not in line with your current career aspirations, rewrite it.  The statement can be general, but should show some direction toward the field in which you want to work.
5. Reevaluate your references.  Verify that these individuals still work where you have noted and that contact information for each is correct.  If you have developed new contacts who can attest to your recent achievements or heightened responsibility, consider replacing them with outdated references.
6. Update your résumé format.  Check online sample résumés to see if yours looks outdated and revise accordingly.  Additionally, you should create an electronic version of your résumé if you don’t already have one.
7. Proofread everything.  Sloppy spelling, grammar and punctuation may take you out of the running immediately.  If you’re not proficient in proofreading, ask a trusted friend or associate to help.

Looking for a better career opportunity in Wisconsin?  Give us a call.  ABR Employment Services has a wide variety of temporary and direct hire opportunities in the office/clerical, professional, light industrial and technical sectors.

The time and costs associated with recruiting, screening, testing and hiring employees are significant.  So why do it? 

If your personnel needs are short-term, seasonal or project-oriented, consider working with a staffing service.  A staffing firm can provide access to the talent you need, while eliminating many employment related expenses, including:

• Recruiting.  A staffing service can assume responsibility for advertising, posting positions online, screening résumés, interviewing and checking applicant references.  Most will also administer drug testing, when required.
• Training.  Temporary employees come to your firm armed with the skills and experience needed to do the job.  If necessary, many staffing firms will custom-design training and orientation programs to meet your needs.
• Benefits.  A temporary worker is an employee of the staffing firm.  As such, the staffing firm assumes responsibility for any benefits their employee may receive.
• Administration.  By using temporary employees, your HR department eliminates the added headaches associated with payroll processing.  The staffing firm handles all legal and administrative responsibility for payroll processing, paying workers’ compensation and unemployment premiums, and managing tax and government reporting.
• Bad hires.  If you aren’t happy with a temporary employee’s work ethic or performance, you have the right to end the assignment any time.  And if you need a direct hire, consider starting potential employees as temporaries.  This way, you can find out if a new employee has the skills and attitude you need before making a hiring decision.

For more information about our temporary staffing services for Wisconsin employers, please visit ABR Employment Services’ website.

To get ahead in  this world, you have to “put your best foot forward.”  But, there’s a fine line between respectable self-promotion and shameless bragging.  So how do you use self-promotion to advance your career, without coming across as a show-off?  Use these quick tips to tactfully toot your own horn:

1. Realize that context is everything.  To successfully self-promote, your comments need to be relevant to the conversation.  Bringing up your latest success while your boss is talking about his favorite TV show will not earn you any points.  Bide your time until the conversation switches gears.  Research has shown that once a topic has been raised, a subsequent boast is not viewed as inappropriate – because it’s in context.
2. Wait for the right moment.   Believe it or not, it is okay to steer a conversation toward a topic relevant to your accomplishment.  However, changing topics doesn’t give you license to just blurt out what you’ve done.  Be patient and wait until your conversation partner asks a question that gives you the opening you need.
3. Be a tortoise, not a hare.  Self-promotion is about building a long-term reputation for yourself; establishing trust and respect in your workplace (or the marketplace).  So get in it for the long-haul by making self-promotion a habit.  Set daily goals for doing something small – sharing an idea, reaching out to someone, showing up at an event – and measurable results will follow in time.
4. Promote your ideas.  Beyond talking up accomplishments, you should also spread your ideas, concepts and vision.  By promoting your ideas (as opposed to just your deeds) you will give co-workers and superiors something to support – without being “turned off” or threatened by your success.
5. Know yourself.  Are you like most people, who err on the side of caution and don’t talk themselves up enough?  Or are you the type who tends to talk easily about yourself and your accomplishments?  If you’re unsure, ask a trusted friend into which end of the spectrum you fall.  The art of successful self-promotion depends upon having the self-knowledge to realize when to toot your own horn, and when to let your actions speak for themselves.

Let ABR Employment Services help you put your best foot forward.  When you come in for an interview, our experienced staffing specialists will learn about your skills, interests, experience and needs – then show you where your strengths lie.  We can help you master the art of self-promotion and find the perfect employment opportunity.  Just give us a call.

As a manager, you know that empowered employees:

• have the authority, and take the initiative, to make sound business decisions;
• are energetic, passionate and committed to doing a great job;
• are creative and innovative problem solvers;
• continually strive to improve quality, productivity and morale;

all because they feel personally rewarded for doing so.

But while the benefits of empowerment are clear, the steps to creating an empowered workplace may not be.  Use these quick tips to get your business started on the right path:

1. Understand what empowerment really is.  Empowerment isn’t something you do to people.  It’s an environment you create by giving employees goals, information, feedback, training and positive reinforcement.
2. Identify an opportunity for empowerment.  Start small.  Create a work team by selecting a few key employees who have the right skills, knowledge and resources to complete a small test project.  This project should be challenging enough to allow your staff to grow and take on additional responsibilities.
3. Set clear expectations.  Let your employees know what to do and how to do it.  Factors to consider include:  deadlines, channels for sharing information, methods for delegating authority, and ways to check progress / measure success.
4. Provide decision-making guidelines.  Provide clear instructions for when and how to make good decisions.  Explain when it’s okay to the take initiative and when employees should check with team members first.
5. Encourage open communication.  Information sharing is a critical component of an empowered workplace.  Create an atmosphere in which employees feel comfortable expressing concerns and sharing new ideas.
6. Establish accountability.  Provide the advice, perspective and guidance your team needs, but require them to create and manage their own solutions.  If mistakes are made, do not step in and fix them – use them as opportunities for employees to learn.
7. Let go.  Tough as it may be, don’t micromanage.  Once you’ve established clear expectations and guidelines for the project, it’s time to take your hands off the wheel.
8. Provide positive reinforcement.  For empowerment to permanently take hold in your organization, your employees have to want to do it.  So celebrate the successes (however small) your employees have while working on the test project.  Provide the feedback they need to feel respected and valued in their efforts.
9. Review results, then take it to the next level.  Once the project is complete, assemble your team for a debriefing.  How did the group do?  What worked?  What didn’t?  Use the lessons learned to develop a more comprehensive plan for getting your whole company on the road to empowerment.

An Empowered Workplace Starts with Great People

ABR Employment Services can deliver the talented office, professional, technical and industrial staff you need to create an empowered workplace.

When it comes to effectively staffing your business, the options are endless – and can be, frankly, a little overwhelming.  Today’s post is dedicated to straight talk about a strategic staffing service that may be of real value to your organization:  planned staffing.

The 101

So, what exactly is “planned staffing”?

Simply put, planned staffing is the strategic use of temporaries to accommodate workloads known to vary in seasons or other cycles.  Traditional planned staffing strategies typically allocate between 10 and 20 percent of the total workforce as supplemental (temporary) employees.

To implement a planned staffing solution, a company’s decision makers meet with a highly trained staffing professional to discuss how the organization’s workload changes throughout the year.  The staffing professional then analyzes the company’s workforce needs, and designs a comprehensive plan for managing the peaks and valleys with supplemental staff.

When business surges, temporaries are brought in to handle the additional business volume.  Once the peak cycle is completed, the staffing firm reassigns its employees to other companies.

Planned Staffing Benefits

For businesses with (at least somewhat) predictable surges in demand, a planned staffing option offers a number of benefits:

• Flexibility.  Bringing in supplemental staff allows you to handle surges in demand without impacting fixed expenses.  Your workforce stays lean and flexible.
• Less risk and expense.  Using temporaries during short-term peak periods is less burdensome, risky and expensive than hiring – and then laying off – direct employees.
• Instant access to the help you need.  Your staffing provider will recruit in advance of your needs, to ensure you have qualified candidates ready to work – right when you need them.  At your request, the staffing firm can even develop customized orientation materials to get temporaries up-to-speed more quickly.
• Fewer layoffs.  When business slows, it’s the temporaries who go first.  As a result, core employees enjoy increased job security.
• Less burnout and overtime.  Using supplemental staff reduces overtime and eliminates the burn-out overwork can cause.
• Hiring benefits.  When you implement a planned staffing solution, you have the luxury of hiring employees from a pool of temporaries who are already trained, and have proven their dependability and cultural fit.  Discuss your temporary-to-hire options with your staffing provider.

Is a Planned Staffing Option Right for Your Business?

If your business experiences frequent and/or predictable changes in workload, contact ABR Employment Services.  We’ll discuss your needs, help you weigh your options and determine if planned staffing is right for your organization.