By Kevin Flemming, CSP Kevin Flemming is president of Integrity Personnel, Inc., a Lehigh Valley-based staffing and recruiting firm. He writes about staffing issues for small and medium-sized employers. His column, "Talent Search," appears in the Eastern Pennsylvania Business Journal every third week of the month.

It may be hard to believe in this age of enlightenment, but at one time a common term for a temporary employee was “Kelly Girl.” Fortunately, there are very few people in business today who maintain that perception of the typical temporary.

When temporary staffing evolved into a standard business service, the prototypical temporary was, in fact, a woman. Companies used temporary workers to cover specialized positions such as switchboard operator, stenographer and typist. Over the past 50 years, specialization has given way to multi-tasking as the modern employee is expected to develop several skills at once. As the old cigarette slogan says, “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

Today, the temporary workforce is made up of both men and women and covers the entire scope of occupational codes, from warehouse workers to physicians. Members of the modern workforce acknowledge that temporary jobs can be as respectable and rewarding as so-called permanent opportunities. This article will not explore the sociological impact of temporary staffing on America’s workforce—although I’d love to have that conversation with you someday. Rather, we’ll review the best methods for choosing a temporary staffing service for your company.

Quantifying good service
The national temporary workforce currently numbers 2.1 million people, and the business of supplying those workers has developed into a very professional industry. In spite of this fact, many of the companies that use temporary staffing lack basic criteria for selecting a staffing partner. Like your lawyer and accountant, your staffing service should be selected carefully because you are entrusting the health of your business to the people that they hire.

One method for measuring the quality of a staffing service is to review their industry statistics. These figures are unique to temporary staffing and should be made available to customers who request them. The following stats provide the most insight:

• Fill Ratio: This is the number of orders received compared to the number of orders filled. It reflects a firm’s ability to recruit qualified people when they are needed. A staffing firm should fill 80% or more of their orders to be considered competent.
• No-Show Rate: Even the best firms will experience unreliable employees who just don’t show up to the assignment. Staffing firms that hold reliability as a priority can keep their no-show rate under 5%.
• Walk-Off (or Replacement) Rate: In this scenario, an employee quits the assignment before it is scheduled to end. A replacement rate that is greater than 35% indicates that the firm has problems with employee retention—a red flag when it comes to their ability to complete a project.

These numbers will help you to quickly compare the quality of service delivered by several firms without having to spend a lot of time reading their marketing material. But they are not the only factors to consider.

Measuring a firm’s capabilities
A second set of criteria evaluates the unique business processes and capabilities of a given firm. This information will enable you to choose a service that best fits your specific requirements.

• Interview & Selection Process: Your staffing firm’s representative should be able to clearly explain how the their chooses individuals to work on temporary assignments. The more thorough a screening process is, the more predictable the results will be when they select an employee for your company.

• Retention Methods: Although it may be easy to find a qualified temporary to start an assignment at your office, keeping them on the job until the work is completed is another matter entirely. Replacements cost money. Ask staffing firms how they keep their people on the job and make sure that they offer their temporary employees basic benefits such as vacation and holiday pay, group insurance and bonuses.

• Professional Staff: Like most industries, the temporary staffing industry has a recognized career track. Most staffing professionals don’t just fall into this type of work, but many small firms lack the resources to attract the best and brightest. Quiz your staffing company on the training and certifications that their staff members have completed. Be cautious of short tenures among the people who will be servicing your accounts. Be especially cautious if your account representative was just promoted from a temporary receptionist job last week.

• Specialization: You can’t be everything to everyone. Although many temporary staffing firms provide a mix of skills, you want to be sure that the majority of their work focus on the occupational areas that your company needs. For example, if you need data entry operators, you should use a firm that specializes in clerical and administrative staffing rather than light industrial.

Guarantee a high R.O.S.
The recommendation that I give most often regarding the selection of a staffing partner is to choose one firm only. Some employers spread their temporary staffing orders out to several different firms for fear of becoming dependent upon one vendor. This backfires on them when one of their hiring managers makes a special request or has an emergency need. Just like your company, staffing firms support their loyal customers first—everyone else comes second.

Unless your operation requires more than 50 new temporary workers per week, there is little benefit to contracting multiple firms. By using the evaluation tools described here, you can develop the necessary trust in your staffing service to create a relationship that delivers the highest R.O.S. (return on service).