Letís rethink how we manage temporary staff, recommends peopleclick

The UK recruitment industry is valued at around 24 billion, representing a huge spend for businesses. At a time of economic uncertainty, employers are looking for different ways of reducing expenditure. To lower recruitment costs, companies need to use the best staffing agencies to service their needs as efficiently as possible, says Larry Cucchi, Director of Operations for Peopleclick, the global leader in workforce management technology and services.

Efficiency becomes even more vital when companies use a lot of contract staff: whilst 2 billion was spent on recruiting full-time staff, a massive 22 billion was spent on the recruitment of contract staff in the UK.

One solution is to use vendor management systems such as Peopleclick VMS, which enable employers to reduce costs by identifying the best staffing agencies for their needs. Vendor management solutions enable companies to adopt strategic sourcing strategies and manage spend, something that all businesses are keen to realise, but has been neglected to date in the recruitment of temporary staff. Vendor management gives companies the power to separate their contract staffing agencies into different tiers and to negotiate favourable terms depending on the tier.

Cucchi sees multiple benefits to this approach: ìBy measuring service, costs and candidate quality, users can instantly analyse the quality of particular staffing agencies. Without these systems, companies are unaware which are the best suppliers and continue to waste time and resources on agencies that donít give them a good return on investment.î

Cucchi concludes: ìVendor management solutions could be the answer, in terms of enabling companies to take control of their contract staff expenditure. However, whilst used widely in the US, few UK companies are currently taking advantage of these systems. The massive potential benefits in terms of cost, control and reporting might be enough to convince them to change their minds.î

For further information: