For nearly 10 years, we’ve served as the onsite staffing provider for this leading manufacturer of dry-cell batteries and flashlights, and we’ve grown our partnership with them over that time. We staff multiple manufacturing facilities for them, and our client can always count on us to bolster their operations while we navigate their holiday peak. Every year, we also bring our staffing expertise to the table during hurricane season and assist the client throughthe shifting demands they experience.
Challenge
During an especially challenging storm season, a combination of factors made for a very demanding peak at our client’s North Carolina manufacturing plant. The hurricanes had been particularly severe, which increased demand for flashlights and dry-cell batteries in areas that experienced power outages, raising theclient’s overall consumer demand by 35 to 50 percent. While consumer demand rose, competition for available talent was heating up. Around this time, the region where the plant was located experienced a period of particularly low unemployment and an increase in the average wage rate.
Solution
To overcome these difficult circumstances, we leveraged our strengths, including innovative recruiting tactics and predictive analytics, and tapped into our partner’s capabilities. During meetings with the client, we shared our comprehensive research on local market rates and unemployment. These findings led to several productive conversations where we developed strategies to successfully combat the challenges the plant was facing.
First, we increased our hourly wages to get closer to the area’s average rate. Still, the market for talent was so competitive that we
had to stretch even further to attract the right workers. We had to get creative. We used multiple strategies to broaden our candidate pool. One approach was to bring in bilingual recruiters who spoke both Spanish and English. With their help, we were able to reach a broader group of local candidates. Another approach was to update background requirements for open spots so that we prioritized only the most essential job skills for the position. One of the most important tools we deployed during this phase was Stafftrack, our data-powered recruitment tracking and workforce management technology.
As far as 12 weeks ahead, Stafftrack’s predictive analytics capabilities enabled our teams to anticipate shortages in our fill rates and in our hours worked. We were able to time other recruiting and scheduling initiatives around these anticipated issues. In addition, we furthered the strong partnership we had developed with this client. We shared our data with them so they could alter their production schedule to align with our existing workforce’s availability and our timetable for onboarding new recruits.
In a tight market, and while consumer demand soared, we enabled our client to have a successful peak season. Ultimately, this success was due to the strength of our dedicated partnership as well as our innovative recruiting strategies. Additionally, the predictive analytics capabilities of Stafftrack allowed us to anticipate staffing shortages in advance and to revise production schedules when shortages could not be avoided.
Results
In our first year, Staff Management | SMX was able to achieve a 94% fill rate and 96% attendance rate while limiting turnover to 3.3%.
