Bellevue, Washington’s PACE Staffing Network has a 45-year history of helping Northwest employers navigate a variety of economic marketplaces – many created by sudden and unexpected changes like we recently experienced with the COVID shutdowns. While all economic changes tend to impact the people side of Northwest businesses first, this one was particularly unique in that not all companies laid off, but all made significant changes in how work got done. Large metro areas like Seattle and Bellevue were literally vacated as employers moved their employees from office to virtual work settings at numbers no one could have anticipated.
Like most economic adjustments, the post lockdown period has its own set of challenges. Many employers have had to re-configure how work gets done, who and how they will hire, and are in various stages of downsizing, upsizing, or right-sizing to fit their particular markets. Everyone is looking for ways to build back in a very changed economic landscape. The good news is that many Northwest companies are being fueled by opportunities they did not envision a short six months ago. The bad news is that some are still struggling to keep heads above water.
As a full-service staffing company, PACE Staffing Network has a wide range of staffing solutions designed to help all employers navigate this very changed landscape. PACE’s leadership team has made sure we have solutions for every business scenario. While it’s true that pure-play “staffing” companies are the canary in the mineshaft and are often the first to feel an economic downturn (“We’ve decided to downsize our workforce and we no longer need those five temporary employees you put to work for us last month”) those who are creative and innovative like PACE, with multiple solutions, are always the first to experience a rebirth of the economic engine in the early stages of recovery. (“Remember those five temporary employees you put to work for us in March, are any of them available now?”).
Here are some of the scenarios the PACE team is helping clients with now…
1.) If an employer’s economic landscape is volatile or uncertain, PACE clients have relied on PACE’s more traditional long term temporary and contract staffing services to ensure staffing flexibility. When the build back begins, temporary staffing is the option that makes the most sense, and pickups in the requests for temporary staff to fill assignments with unknown end dates often signal the early signs of build bad. Even though businesses are experiencing an uptick in business, they need to respond cautiously. They expand their staff but not in ways that grow their commitments to fixed costs. PACE looks at this model as a way for them to make a big difference. By carefully screening their temporary employees to meet their clients’ long term needs for staff, when it’s time the hire permanently, their clients have a ready source of employees, already working. Hiring plans are executed quickly and at almost no additional costs to the client. PACE helps employers find that fine line between what the sales and production people claim they will need in staff to “take care of business” and what the accounting side of the house says they must do to manage the risk of overspending. .
2.) PACE’s temp-to-hire auditioning service is the service du jour during periods where PACE clients are trying to be smart about how they manage growth – “trying before they buy.” The opportunity companies have to use a third party employer (PACE) to find and hire the people they need while avoiding long term investment level commitments (at least until the time is right), has always been one of PACE’s most popular offerings during periods of “managed growth”. Employers often find themselves with volatile staffing needs, but without the internal resources to recruit and hire on their own. Full-service staffing firms, like PACE, who have a ready solution for this problem, often find themselves busy during the early to midterm stages of an economic cycle.
3.) Interestingly enough, many PACE clients have continued to use PACE’s direct hire recruiting services throughout the economic downtick. Some employers who faced layoffs and shutdowns earlier this year are looking to hire high performing employees to fuel their build back but are uncovering that finding talent in a crowded candidate marketplace is not easy. They turn to PACE for a full menu of professional sourcing, screening, and candidate vetting services they can either purchase as a package or ala carte.
4.) The stakes for hiring right in the current competitive marketplace couldn’t be higher and employers who find themselves short on the internal resources needed to find those high talent candidates turn to PACE for solutions. Realizing that there are no short cuts to hiring right, PACE created innovative ways for PACE clients to buy their services even when recruiting budgets are tight. These are win-win programs, making sure that the PACE team is paid for work performed, but organized in a way that allows each client’s service model to be customized to fit their specific needs for service and their recruiting budgets. Contingent fee programs are still available but re-architected to avoid the high upfront fees replaced by a pay overtime program based on employee retention. This has been a popular model for Northwest employers who have avoided third party recruiting services because of the high costs of front-loaded fees.
If you are interested in learning more about these “get more for less” service models give the PACE team a call at 425 – 637-3312 or email them at [email protected].
As employers move to remote work settings, PACE has also shifted its candidate screening processes to identify candidates that will do well in virtual roles. PACE is finding that while all employees claim they want to “work from home” and have the tools to do so, not all are cut out for the changes they experience when actually working from home on a permanent basis. Employees with high social needs or employees who lack the discipline or organizational talent to stay focused on multiple tasks in an at homework setting often don’t deliver the results employers need in today’s competitive marketplace. PACE has put in place a rating scale that captures an assessment of an employee’s “virtual work” readiness which can be invaluable to employers who don’t see the return to the workplace happening soon.
What PACE has discovered in this very changed marketplace is that each customer requires a different set of PACE services in order to align with the changes they are making in their business models. This plays right into the PACE sweet spot which in their 45-year history has always been the delivery of highly customized staffing services. PACE is not the ordinary “one menu fits all” service provider, which has made them a highly recognized and rewarded Northwest business. Even though PACE only services employers located in the Pacific Northwest, they consistently rank in the top 2% of staffing companies nationwide based on third-party surveys of customer satisfaction. Forbes has taken notice too, tagging them as one of the top staffing companies in the nation.
While all staffing companies like PACE will play a vital role in the Northwest build back, as they provide flexible solutions for employers during changing market conditions, only a few staffing companies are like PACE, offering a full range of staffing services, custom-designed for each client. As they have done for decades, PACE will continue to monitor the local job market and create smart solutions that fit the unique needs of Northwest employers and job seekers. The PACE team is committed to help Northwest businesses, particularly smaller employers without the internal resources of Northwest bigs, to grow and thrive for years to come!
