4 Questions to Streamline Staffing Processes

By Scott Wintrip, recruiting and hiring expert, author of High Velocity Hiring

Here’s a truth you face every day: there’s a limit to your available time, effort, and resources. But that’s not a reality that clients consider when they tell you they need their workers to start yesterday. That’s why it’s crucial that staffing agencies improve operational effectiveness.

A consistent theme in operationally effective staffing firms is less being more. These organizations expend less time, effort, and resources and get more done. With those saved effort and resources, they can focus on growing their candidate base, expanding market share, and increasing profitability.

But how can you take big, complicated staffing processes and start streamlining them?

One critical step to streamlining is to look at the individual tasks that make up larger processes. Start by looking at each task within each of your processes and answer the 4 “ates,” questions that end with the letters “a-t-e.”

Some tasks are done only because that’s how work has always been done. Others have little value or are redundant. That’s why the elimination question comes first—one of the best ways to streamline effort is to get rid of it.

If a task truly needs to be done, that doesn’t mean it needs to be done by the person or individuals who’ve done it in the past. Non-revenue generating tasks can be delegated to new hires, support staff, or a newly created administrative role. Delegation can also be routed to external contractors and service providers. 

When a task worth doing can’t be eliminated or delegated, we turn to automation. Applying automation to streamline effort is worth the investment when doing so reduces effort, is easy to implement and use, and improves results.

Since not everything can be automated, we have one last way of streamlining staffing processes—integration. Consider how a task can be batched together or combined with similar efforts. Doing so maximizes momentum and saves precious minutes that can be invested in growing your business.

Becoming operationally efficient might seem like a lofty goal. What seems far away is much closer than it appears. It requires reframing the path to achieving that goal: it’ll take your smarts, not just sweat.

Thankfully, all it takes to get started are a few conversations. These four questions are ones you can use to ask yourself to start finding streamlining solutions. By bringing your colleagues into that conversation, you can find new opportunities and start creating real change. This will bring back your valued time, effort, and resources, and maximize your competitiveness. With the right questions, you can keep growing their candidate base, expanding market share, and increasing profitability.