building a contingent workforce with randstad inhouse services.

Contingent workers have a crucial role to play in the performance and, ultimately, the success of many businesses.

Flexible staffing - and specifically the ability to acquire particular skills at short notice, or scale your workforce capacity up and down in line with seasonal trends and customer demand - can prove particularly important in competitive, rapidly evolving industries like manufacturing, logistics and the automotive sector.

Using contingent labor can also help you achieve practical, everyday benefits such as:

• Reduced overtime costs
• Filling short-term capacity gaps created by absenteeism and staff turnover
• Cheaper and quicker hiring than permanent recruitment

We help our clients achieve these advantages with Randstad Inhouse Services (RIS), our dedicated on-site solution for delivering high-volume flexible labor.

Let's take a closer look at RIS, certain aspects of how it works and some of the ways it could benefit your business.

on-site solutions

RIS is an on-site service, which means we provide a dedicated team who work closely with you at your business premises. This provides many advantages, one of which is the deep understanding of your company that we develop by being based on-site. Our teams get a first-hand view of how your business functions, what you do well, the most common obstacles you face and where you have opportunities to improve.

Your account team will be able to provide insights into why you might be encountering certain problems and - even more importantly - what you can do to address the root causes of these issues.

Another key benefit that comes with having a consultant based on-site at your business is our care program, which focuses on helping you build the strongest possible relationships with your existing workers. From their position on the frontline of your company and its everyday operations, our process managers can gauge sentiment and attitudes in the workforce and discover your employees' most common concerns, priorities and questions.

This is a key benefit if you're committed to goals such as delivering a positive workplace experience, building a strong employer brand and reducing staff turnover.

a dedicated account team

When you sign up to RIS, you're assigned a dedicated account team consisting of:

• A commercial manager
• An account specialist
• A process manager

These members of your team are supported by experts specializing in disciplines such as health and safety, legal and compliance, which means you receive a comprehensive, holistic service that benefits your organization in various ways.

The on-site teams we provide for our clients reflect our commitment to driving continuous improvement, which helps us to build long-term, lasting relationships. We can help you with flexible staffing, workforce management and other immediate concerns, but we're also dedicated to delivering broader solutions and outcomes that pave the way to sustainable growth and success.

Furthermore, having a dedicated, on-site account team available to you is crucial for building trust and familiarity in the working relationship. When you're faced with a situation that requires quick and effective solutions - such as filling workforce gaps caused by unexpected absences - you should feel confident that your team can step up and deliver the right results.

The extent of our involvement is entirely up to you. All of our clients have full control when it comes to deciding the tasks they want to allocate to RIS and those they want to keep to themselves.

understanding your market

We have decades of experience in industries like manufacturing, logistics and the automotive sector. The close partnerships we have with clients in these segments help us stay up to date with the latest trends, developments and challenges they face.

This means we're uniquely positioned to support other businesses in these industries by providing research findings and insights that can lead to more relevant, responsive workforce management.

In the automotive sector, for example, companies should be able to keep up with fast-moving trends that are relevant to talent acquisition and employee expectations, such as:

• The need for new capabilities in design and manufacturing to reflect the shift to electric vehicles and emerging technologies like autonomous driving
• Health and safety priorities among frontline workers
• Interest in flexible and remote working

One of the biggest benefits you can gain by working with us is a stronger understanding of your industry and the direction it's heading in. We can also keep you abreast of our latest employer branding insights, which will help you understand jobseekers' needs and how you can appeal to them.

According to our Employer Brand Research 2021 report, the number one value attributed to all five of the most attractive industries around the world - including the automotive sector - is financial health.

Since RIS provides dedicated on-site consultants and specialists for your business, you will always have quick access to valuable industry insights and knowledge.

finding the talent you need

Acquiring and retaining the talent you need to achieve your core business objectives (whether it's in the form of contingent labor or permanent staff) should always be a top priority. On some occasions - when you need to meet a sudden increase in customer demand, for example - it's vital that you're able to identify and recruit capable workers at high speed.

This is one area where RIS provides enormous value for our clients. We maintain an extensive network of qualified, vetted candidates, who are ready to start work at short notice. Based on our knowledge and understanding of your company, which we've accumulated by being based on-site and meeting with relevant stakeholders within your organization, we can find and recommend candidates who would be a good fit for your workplace and the role in question.

You also have the option of taking a broader view and advertising available roles to the wider labor market. In this case, we can help you find the most appropriate marketing channels and also provide market insights and recruitment tools to optimize the process. 

The Randstad website and our subsidiary Monster - one of the world's largest job boards - are powerful channels for you to get your vacancies seen by a wide audience. 

cutting costs

RIS has established a track record for helping our clients achieve reductions in their total workforce spend of at least 2%.

There are various ways these financial gains can be achieved. Here are some examples: 

• Quicker and more efficient recruitment: The less time you have to dedicate to your hiring cycle, the more you save. HR staff can spend fewer hours on admin and more on activities that generate value for the business.
• Reduced overtime costs: If you can bring in capable contingent workers to boost capacity at short notice, you don't need to worry about covering overtime costs for permanent employees.
• Higher productivity: Having the right people in your workforce at the right time increases your output, raises efficiency and reduces the risk that you'll miss out on valuable business opportunities.
• Reduced turnover: Constantly losing staff and having to replace them is expensive, with a range of costs to take into account. Our care program can help you improve your workforce understanding and maintain employee satisfaction.
• Seasonal flexibility: Industries like manufacturing are heavily affected by seasonal trends. A strong flexible staffing strategy makes it easier for you to scale your workforce up and down, so you always have the right number of staff on hand at the right time. 

engagement and retention

Delivering a positive employee experience is a worthwhile goal for every business. If people feel engaged and happy working for you, they will be more productive and less likely to leave. As well as being valuable in the short term, this helps you build a positive employer brand, which is beneficial for your future recruitment activities.

One of the many reasons why RIS prioritizes having consultants and process managers on-site with our clients is so they can get out on the floor of your workplace and mix with people. By communicating with your employees face-to-face, answering their questions and listening to their concerns, your team can make relevant recommendations to drive engagement.

We can also provide support with key aspects of the employee experience that feed into engagement and retention, including:

• Onboarding and induction: Make sure you get these processes right if you want to start relationships on the best footing.
• Training: Give people the skills they need to work efficiently and boost their future employability.
• Performance reviews: Keep track of how individual workers are doing and set targets for ongoing improvement.

client outcomes

Here are some of the results RIS has delivered for past clients:

• Labor cost savings of 10% per worker, achieved through a shift pattern restructuring program
• An overtime cost reduction of 9.5%, following the identification of a critical skills gap that enabled higher operational efficiency
• Enhanced training, leading to an 80% reduction in defects and customer concerns

And here is some of the feedback we have received from satisfied clients:

"Randstad Inhouse Services created a bespoke recruitment solution which is aligned to our operational and calculated business requirements. Working as a strategic on-site partner, they manage our temporary and permanent resourcing needs across both general and specialist functional roles."

• HR Director, EMEA - Global pharmaceutical business

"The quality of candidates supplied by Randstad were of a much higher quality than we have ever been able to attract ourselves and the whole mass recruitment process was run with professionalism and well within the time frames we set."

• HR Manager - Large-scale automotive manufacturer

For further insights into how RIS could benefit your business, take a look at our case study showing how we helped a global luggage manufacturer and retailer create a new flexible staffing model.