Client:
Our client is a leading multinational staffing company that places thousands of workers daily in various industries and roles. They have a customer-intimate approach to their clients and an equally intimate approach to their workforce so that they can be sure to make a perfect match between their client’s needs and the needs of their workers.
Challenge:
The staffing industry has evolved substantially over the last several years – driven by demographic changes in the workforce, expansion of the types of jobs available, and fundamental shifts in how people work, such as the emergence of the “gig economy”. These changes have resulted in substantial growth and opportunity for the staffing industry and have also required staffing industry companies to transform how they reach, engage, and employ workers.
One of the significant areas of transformation is how both workers and employers interact with staffing companies, and in particular, the role of technology to support rapid screening, onboarding, deployment, and training of the workforce. This IT revolution is real-time and mobile-centric and enables people to be onboarded to the ideal role for them in a matter of hours instead of weeks that were the standard just a few years ago.
Our client reached out to Dispatch to help them understand the “art of the possible”. We assisted them in creating a streamlined, mobile-centric, and automated onboarding process leveraging best-of-breed technologies combined with their established infrastructure.
Solution:
Dispatch worked with the executive team, subject matter experts across the organization, and select technology vendor partners to define a future state vision and an execution plan. We followed our Digital Transformation strategic framework for this engagement, which we call DEEP. For information on the DEEP process, download our free PDF resource and learn about each step in more detail.
- In the Define stage of the project, we worked with the executive team to establish a clear vision for future state client, worker, and employee experiences. We also identified the key performance indicators for the company that would measure their performance and progress towards aspirational objectives.
- In the Evaluate stage, we held workshops with the executive team and a broad cross-section of employees who execute current-state processes. We conducted detailed workflow mapping, focusing on the people and functions involved, data and systems used, bottlenecks, and user experiences through the worker onboarding process.
- During the Engage stage, we worked with the client team and select technology vendors, to create future-state workflows incorporating next-generation technology. We identified several interface points in the workflow and worked through several user journeys to understand how various types of workers would interact with the future-state systems. We tested these future-state workflows against the KPIs identified in the Define stage to predict changes in onboarding velocity, error rates, and user experiences.
- During the Plan stage, we helped create a work plan that included adopting new technology solutions, changing the data model to accommodate new requirements, and changing systems of truth for core worker data. We also built out initial change management activities and risk mitigation plans, so that implementation and transformation could begin quickly.
Outcome
This was a fast and strategic project that was completed over two months. The outcome included:
- confirmation of a future-state vision,
- selection of new technology partners to help our client achieve that vision,
- a future state technology architecture,
- new business processes,
- a clear sense of what the worker’s experience would be,
- and a de-risked plan for execution.
The client has confidence that this project will improve their overall efficiency for onboarding and further support their position as a leader in the staffing industry.
Cameron Hay is the CEO of Dispatch Integration, a data integration and workflow automation company with clients in Canada, US, Europe and Australia. He has over 30 years of leadership experience in various technology-oriented industries.