Do any of these scenarios sound familiar? A “yes” to any of these questions may point to urgent opportunities for making your team structure more responsive.
- Turning down customers due to insufficient staff
- Team bottlenecks handling peaks in demand
- Static staffing costs, even when sales fall
- Great teams worn-down from frequent overtime
Why responsive staffing matters.
Fluctuations are inevitable.
Scheduling team rotas can be challenging even with proper planning. That’s because irregular demand is difficult to plan for. When emergencies happen, managers often hire whoever is available, not the best person for the job.
As the economy stutters through the challenges of COVID-19, some businesses have successfully adapted supply chains to scale up and down with health & safety guidelines and irregular demand. They couldn't have done it without the right staffing partner.
Most solutions for responsive staffing have trade offs.
Asking the core team to work overtime or on reduced hours can lead to payroll and contractual complexities, making it slow to act. This approach can also cause friction in the team, especially if workers have limited input into scheduling. You might lose your team over this if you do it too often.
Workforce management tools enable the core team to self-schedule and managers to integrate their own network of flexible workers. This solution adds transparency and can reduce the pressure on the core team. However, it is limited by the size of your flexible pool.
Traditional temp agencies provide a convenient solution for improving staff coverage. Some can occasionally handle short-term requests, but few can help in emergencies like last-minute dates for a sold-out concert. If they can, it's expensive. Increasingly, businesses also want to decide who they hire instead of having someone sent to them. Traditional agencies cannot give customers that level of control.
Staffing Solutions. What to look for:
Getting responsive staffing right might be complex, but the solution needn’t be. A great solution should:
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Only charge for completed shifts, for ‘true’ responsiveness
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Allow you to agree on work contracts in a fair, efficient and frictionless way, even at short notice
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Provide access to a large pool of fully vetted workers
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Handle complex shift requirements on demand
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Allow you to choose who you hire and offer full financial transparency
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Allow you to build your own pool of favourite workers, accessible on demand
Does your responsive staffing strategy tick these boxes?
Coople. A rewarding solution for responsive staffing.
We provide an all-in-one solution that can help you take staffing responsiveness to the next level:
- Cost transparency Pay only for completed shifts. Access line-item breakdown of fees, salaries holidays and National Insurance for every shift hour.
- Real-time matching of your job postings with all qualified workers on the platform.
- Assured quality from transparency – see job histories, ratings from other employers and which favourites pools they are part of. Never recruit blind again
- Build your own 'favourites' pool - Save lists of favourite workers you trust; auto-hire and auto-schedule for hyper-responsiveness
- End-to-end convenience with one solution from sourcing to payroll, saving hiring managers time. You can modify and reschedule hours efficiently, even on the go.
Coople makes responsive staffing a rewarding experience for today and tomorrow. This means matching motivated businesses like yours with ambitious workers, who are keen to make an impact today and prepared to help unlock new capabilities tomorrow.
Are you exploring solutions? See here how we helped Deliveroo Editions, Krispy Kreme, and Budgens find the right staff flexibly.
