There is no perfect formula to grow your staffing agency. From start-ups to small or medium-sized firms, each staffing agency’s growth initiatives are unique to their business model, geography and market sector. Here are a few tips on how to align your business plan to support growth at your staffing agency in 2019.
1. Understand Your Market
The first step towards growing your staffing agency is understanding the current market trends and characteristics. First, keep an eye on what’s going on in the staffing industry. Is the staffing industry growing or shrinking in the next couple of years? Generally, the staffing industry will grow in correlation with the trend line of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). You can keep an eye on this data through the American Staffing Association’s website.
The second piece of market research is to understand what’s going in your customers’ industries. If your primary customers are light industrial, what are the market factors affecting their growth? Are they expected to have a good year and grow? Or are the trends indicating that they might have to downsize or shift business priorities? By keeping an eye on these marketplace trends, you can more accurately predict the size and frequency of your job orders from your top customers to help you create a more strategic business plan for your staffing agency. To help you monitor these trends, you can check out the Economic News Releases from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
2. Focus on Improving Efficiency
A staffing agency is never too small to start improving its operational processes. Efficiency is especially critical for smaller staffing agencies since resources and time are often more limited than larger agencies. There are two questions to ask when you’re looking at improving your processes. First, what process will work for the business right now? Second, what will work for the business in the future? It’s beneficial to understand the answer to both questions. A solid understanding of process scalability can help you to implement processes that will best align with your staffing agency’s future growth.
3. Make Smart Investments in Technology
Making a significant investment in technology can often be a challenge for smaller staffing agencies. There’s a delicate balance between being small enough that manual processes or a bunch of different software systems is the best way to maximize profitability and when your staffing firm is simply too large for this to be a cost-effective solution. If you think that your staffing agency is experiencing some growing pains, do your research and due diligence to find a staffing software system that will work for your current business model (and budget) as well as scale for future growth.
What are the next steps to support staffing agency growth?
If you’re looking to improve efficiency and grow your small or medium-sized staffing agency, check out our latest addition to the TempWorks Software product suite, TempWorks Core. For firms with as few as one or two users, staffing agencies receive the tools they need to manage candidates, create customer records, and fill orders. It also delivers the functionality to perform simple back office functions, such as standard invoicing and check calculations.
With an out of the box staffing software solution, a low cost per user and no long-term contracts, TempWorks Core provides a cost-effective solution to help you grow your staffing business and increase operational efficiency and profitability. Contact us today to learn more or check out our recorded demo for more information on TempWorks Core.
If you liked this article, read this next: Top Staffing Trends and Challenges in 2019.