The 2 ways to innovate as an employment agency

Your organization wants to grow, even in these challenging times. Innovating is the way to go, we all know that. You can digitally innovate along two axes: on one hand by developing innovative digital services and on the other by making the existing recruitment process faster, better, and cheaper with the help of digital solutions. Both axes are needed if you want to be successful.

The first axis: innovation

Brokers mainly fish in the same pond when it comes to recruiting talent. It is therefore important that they position themselves in a distinctive way. It’s all about giving people a reason to specifically choose your agency. Competing on price against other agencies then becomes a thing of the past. In addition, it is about finding ways to expand your potential market of contractors, so you create your own extra pond to fish in. This is exactly what the first axis of innovation is about: developing innovative services that make your organization unique compared to others and that enlarge the potential market.

YoungOnes: an example of innovation on the first axis

For instance, in 2018, staffing organization YoungCapital launched the flexible platform YoungOnes, developed together with Freshheads. “Through YoungOnes, clients and platform workers find each other by themselves, no intermediary or recruiter involved,” says Roel Tuerlings, digital strategist involved with, among others, YoungOnes and Wiertz Direct. “The whole process is made self-service: onboarding talents and companies, describing a profile or task, matching, reviews, and invoicing. It works like a charm; a task was filled within 1:45 minutes after posting. An hour and a half later, that person was picking orders in that company's warehouse.”

Pim Graafmans, managing director of YoungOnes, says: “We notice that YoungOnes as an innovative service complements the traditional model [of temping]. If in the past a client called YoungCapital with a request to recruit someone for that same day, we couldn’t respond. With YoungOnes, we can guarantee that speed and effectively fill a gap.”

Roel: “Digital platforms offer something that traditional staffing organizations find harder to provide; speed, accessibility, full transparency, and they give both temporary workers and companies control over their process. Furthermore, we see that the platform model works particularly well for straightforward jobs. The typical ‘hands-on’ tasks that require little on-the-job training and where relatively little people knowledge is needed by the intermediary."

"An additional advantage for staffing agencies is that platforms fit well in sectors with few temp agencies, but where there are mainly many freelancers. For example, logistics, hospitality, trade, and commerce. Once again, it proves that digital platforms are more of a complement than a threat. YoungCapital suddenly got access to a whole new audience with YoungOnes.”

''We notice that YoungOnes complements YoungCapital's traditional staffing model.''

Pim Graafmans, managing director of YoungOnes

The second axis: acceleration

The first axis is about developing innovative services that help staffing and flex agencies remain innovative, enrich their offerings, and grow the potential market. The second axis focuses on digitizing the traditional recruitment process, as this process remains the engine of a staffing organization. Roel: “And that’s a good thing because there are always requests and challenges that require the expert guidance of an intermediary. For example, if it’s a new position, a very specific role, involves hard-to-find candidates or candidates who need to follow a training program. It really makes a difference when an intermediary has a coffee with a temporary worker or visits a client. In fact, in this time when so much is digital, the human factor becomes only more important. People want to be able to look someone in the eye, have someone who listens to them and gives them the confidence: I’ll help you with your challenge.”

But how do you digitize the recruitment process without losing personal connection with candidates and clients? “If staffing agencies precisely digitize the right parts of their recruitment process, they remove the noise for intermediaries, allowing them to focus entirely on personal contact,” says Roel. “Additionally, a digitized recruitment process is faster, better, and cheaper; you can do more with fewer intermediaries. And that isn’t an unnecessary luxury at a time when the labor market tightness also results in a shortage of intermediaries.”

''In this time when so much is digital, the human factor becomes even more important.''

Roel Tuerlings, digital strategist at Freshheads

But how?

Successful, future-proof staffing and flex agencies innovate along two axes: they develop innovative digital services that help them increase their potential market, keeping them an interesting player in the future. Simultaneously, they focus on digitizing the existing recruitment process, making it more efficient and allowing intermediaries to work with more focus on what adds value. You can read more about these solutions on our page about future-proof recruitment.