In staffing or any business for that matter you are always thinking about (or should be) how to make processes better, improve procedures, increase productivity and ultimately increase profits.  It’s easy to get stuck in the rut of “that’s how we have always done it” and continue doing it the same way.

Laura our Corporate Trainer, wrote a great article last week for our blog about taking time to learn something new.  Learning something new doesn’t have to require hours of training, but it does require that you commit to implementing it.  Hopefully you have taken the tips each week and implemented them!

This week I wanted to point out a couple of shortcuts that hopefully will save you some time and help you improve your 4 P’s.

Zip Code. In both the Employee and the Customer record you only need to enter the zip code and the city and state will both automatically populate.  If you are still manually entering in some of your applications this will save a bit of time and key strokes too.

Shortcut Keys.

F1 – Start Page
F2 – Employee Search
F3 – Customer Search
F4 – Order Search
F5 – DH Order Search
F6 – Contact Search
F7 – Advanced Search
F9 – QuickPlace (coming soon)
F11 – Branch Settings (Changing a branch will close all tabs and bring them back to start page

Dynamic Panels. These are the vertical and horizontal panels located throughout Avionté.  By right clicking on any panel you can personalize the information you want to see.  For example you can set up your screen so you can quickly see all your Shortcut Keys on the main screen and Past Jobs on your Employee Screen.  There are currently two tabs in each section; offering you lots of combination choices.

by Brenda Long

I recently asked our staffing software clients for a few of the best or should I say worst excuses they have gotten from their employees for not coming to work.  I intended to make a top 10 list, but the response was so great and I think everyone really enjoyed sharing that this is likely to be a weekly series for the next month or so.  So check back for the next few Friday mornings and start your day with a good dose of staffing humor.

I can’t decide which is more surprising to me, the ones that are undoubtedly fabricated or those that are so brutally honest.

1. Unemployment pays me more
2. I don’t have clean clothes and I need to do laundry
3. “My dog was murdered.”… but I could hear him barking in the background
4. I am being taken to the hospital to have a baby and I didn’t know I was pregnant
5. An employee that was a new father was a no show to work and called in saying “I forgot you gotta buy diapers for the baby!”
6. I won’t be in today. I’m still drunk from last night
7. My neighbor’s daughter got a round hair brush stuck in her hair and I need to help her get it out
8. Just not motivated to go to work today but will be there tomorrow
9. Called because it was going to be a nice day and she wanted to work on her tan because she was planning on going out that night with her friends.
10. Just too good for this kind of work

Feel free to comment with your own great staffing stories and check back next Friday morning for another list of great excuses.

By  John Long

I don’t know about you, but it seems that I’m only getting busier.  Five years ago, I was busy.  Starting a new staffing software company, no matter what the company, takes up every bit of energy you can throw at it.  Then the economy stalled out.  Fortunately for us, we were already a lean shop and with the help of a few key wins early on, we prospered.  We had to work hard to succeed, including new development, scrapping for new sales and servicing existing clients well.  And I thought I was busy then.

Looking back at those times, I can fondly remember a periodic golf round.  The question at first was morning or evening 18.  Then it was 9 or 18.  Now, it is, can I jump out at lunch to hit a bucket of balls.  As with your business, as the economy slowly turns the corner, you will be hesitant to add a lot of internal staff.  Thus, you will be doing more with your same amount of people.  Furthermore, we all have to keep our eye on the future, putting plans and processes in place to lead the pack out of this recovery.  So – all this means a lot of work!

I’m not expert – and I’d love to hear other ideas out there! – but I’ve got two fundamental approaches that I need to consistently remind myself of, to address the volume of work.

1)       Fewer things better: Our tendency is to conquer the world and institute every good idea out there right now.     It doesn’t matter that we haven’t instituted the idea over the last year, it is imperative to do now!!  Drop everything, get on this project.  In the end, you will either be overwhelmed with stuff or you half-implemented all the ideas.  So – do a proverbial clean sweep of all your tasks off your desk onto the floor.  Actually, we just had a prospect come in to the office this morning, so it is in the 2^nd drawer down on the right <ahem>.  The idea is to pick up a few tasks from the pile on the floor and finish those.  You can’t worry about all things.  Do fewer things, but do them well.

2)      Small steps that can be measured: We re-did our sales numbers here recently, with more focus on the small, measurable steps.   The End-Run number for us is # of users sold.  While this is the most important number to my business, it necessarily puts too much focus on opportunities that are about to close, as opposed to all levels of the funnel.  Furthermore, I don’t need to motivate sales people when closing.  The small steps that I’m referring to, are the measurable supporting numbers to the ultimate goal.  For example, in my business – we had over 200 companies in our database that we’ve  never directly contacted.  We label each company with whether they are a target company, too big, different vertical, etc.  There are 120 prospects in our system that haven’t been labeled.   We should be contacting all of our ‘target’ clients at least once per year.  We had 283 target companies that haven’t been called within the year.  Each of these are small, measurable stats.  We pick one and finish it within an agreed upon period.  Then, pick another.  This helps us bond as a team, focus on all levels of the funnel, but also gives us a sense of accomplishment as we meet these goals.  When it is a Thursday afternoon and you have 20 minutes – what should you do?  If you have some small steps in front of you, you can jump right on it.

Any other tips out there?

Doug Gilbertson

As one of the first employees of Avionté Staffing Software, Doug has proven to be an extremely devoted and valuable member of the team.    We can’t thank him enough for his long-standing dedication to helping Avionté achieve its success.

Role at Avionté:  Implementation Specialist – Doug is responsible for managing implementation projects for many of our newest clients.  Starting with a kick-off call, Doug guides clients through the process and manages the entire project from setup, conversion, development, parallel and live week.

Outside of Work:  Doug likes to spend his free time ice fishing, deer hunting and hanging out with friends.  He also drives a Honda Prelude in the 4-cylindar Hornet division racing league in Lacrosse, WI.

On the Lighter Side…

• Favorite food – Steak (medium rare)
• What is the first thing you notice about people? – Their looks  (what can we say…he’s an honest guy)
• The world would be a better place if… – The government wasn’t screwed up
• If you were a car, what kind would you be? – A Chevy Colorado Truck

So far all of the tips have been geared toward front office users, so I thought it might be nice to have a back office tip.  I spoke with Brandon in tech support and asked him what one of the most common questions they fielded about the back office was.. paycheck corrections.  In a perfect world you wouldn’t need to void or reverse a check, but staffing isn’t perfect.  Following is a quick tip to help keep the process quick and let your software do the work for you.

Automating the Process

When Voiding and Reversing paychecks, there is an option for “Generate Original Pay Units”.  If this is checked, Avionté Staffing Software will automatically insert the same pay units that were used in the check that is being voided/reversed.

As you can see below, this will automate the process of reentering the units.  The newly created batch for those hours (2775 in this case) is still open so the user can make any necessary changes.

Once the user verifies and closes that new batch, they are ready to process the new check.  This significantly reduces the time needed to do reversals or voids in Avionté.

Click to view the original Tip of the Week e-mail.

Before I worked in staffing I worked in fitness.  Fitness and staffing aren’t so different from each other.

• Both are service based businesses that require great employees to keep customers returning.
• Both require a staff that not only knows their business, but know how to sell.
• Although you might have the best location, building, equipment, staffing software, ect; none of them matter unless you have the right people to take care of your customers.
• Customers in both areas like to deal with people that are happy, knowledgeable and quick to respond.
• Each offers a service that customers can provide on their own, but choose to outsource it.. so to speak.

Bottom line, who you have on staff, is what matters in a service related business.  If you don’t have the right staff, nothing else really matters.

I do think it was easier to hire for fitness trainers and group fitness instructors than internal staffers.  First, they had to be nationally certified.  Second they had to be able to prove they knew how to do the job.  As a trainer they would need to take another staff member through a training session.  If they were a group fitness instructor, they needed to show they knew how to teach a class.  Both positions required an audition.  If the applicant couldn’t show they knew what they were doing, we didn’t move on.

It’s not as easy when you are hiring for an internal position for a staffing service.  Most of the time you don’t have the luxury of applicants who previously worked in staffing (unless you are living in a larger area) or have a national certification.  You really can’t “audition” them, you need to relay on your interview skills and reference checking to get the whole picture.  It took me a few hires (ok quite a few) to figure out what really worked for our office.   I also started to figure out what previous industries made for good staffing specialists.  Some of my very best hires came to me with no previous knowledge of staffing.

Look for people that have worked in other service related industries.  Sounds obvious right?  I’m talking about service industries that employees have to deal with different levels of customers.  Staffing requires the ability to work with both customers and applicants/employees (both are your customers, but different types).  Also find those industries where they had to sell some type of service, idea or concept.

Teachers – they deal with administrators, students and their parents.. perfect!  They are used to high levels of stress, meeting deadlines and dealing with delicate situations.  Teachers are always selling!  They have to sell ideas to their students and get their buy in.  They also have to sell to their parents.  They need to be able to explain why a student needs additional help or why they should be moved into an advanced class.

Administrative Assistants -  In many cases they deal with a demanding boss, who expects perfection.  They know how to schedule, multitask and who they need to go to in order to get things done!  They are networkers who understand the value of knowing people who know other people.

A couple other industries I liked to hire from: hospitality, banking and medical offices.

Earlier I said you can’t audition new staffing specialists, well you can, kind of.  I used to invite people to come in for a working interview.  Things are different on the other side of the desk.  If you ask most people what happens at a staffing service they would probably answer that someone matches up people with jobs.  They don’t think about all the interviews, calls, visits to a client, skills testing, documentation, background checking and everything else it takes to get someone placed.  This job is not for everyone!  By having a prospective employee come in and shadow another employee for a day or two (and yes you need to pay them) it gives them a better idea of what they will be doing and allows them to make a more informed decision if they want to do it.  I’ve had a few people tell me at the end of the first day this isn’t what they expected and didn’t want to come back the second day.  I’ve also had people who thought it was much better than they thought and couldn’t wait to get started.  Either way, it’s a good tool to help find the right people for your office.

Find the right people to hire, make sure you are doing everything to keep the great people you have and move the people that aren’t adding to the team out the door!

The Minnesota Recruiting and Staffing Association presents – E-Verify for Employers & Staffing Companies.  The Avionté Staffing Software sponsored event will be held Tuesday, May 18, 2010.  

This presentation will provide you an overview of the federal E-Verify system – the online system to verify that employees are legally authorized to work in the United States.  The presentation will include a discussion of the following: 

• What is the E-Verify system and how does it work?
• Who may be required to use the E-Verify system?
• If we are not required to use the E-Verify system, should we?
• Step-by-step procedure for using the E-Verify system

We will be reviewing some of the basic principles of using the Avionté Staffing Software Admin Tools. Learn how to create your own drop downs, set permissions for your users and have your questions answered. Great for new administrators as well as ones who just want to brush up on their skills.

May 20, 2010 at 12 CDT.  E-mail angela@avionte.com to reserve your space.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you know about all the job orders in the system and who is the best fit for which one.  Truth is, even the best staffing specialist or recruiter can’t remember everything.  Think of AutoMatch as an extension to your brain, one that won’t forget a single employee, job order or customer!

First, be sure that all of your Customers, Job Orders and Employees have updated and correct skill codes.  I would suggest being very selective about how many you assign to each of these groups.  Use enough that you will return a good result, but not so many that you have to spend a lot of time filtering.

Next, each time you qualify a new employee, run an AutoMatch to see which job order they might be a good fit for… then assign them.  Easy as one, two, three; well at least the part about matching them is.  Getting them placed with the customer is up to you.

Coming Soon!

AutoMatch is the perfect tool to add potential employees to job orders, help locate work for employees on unemployment or workers’ comp, and coming soon it can help you in your skill marketing efforts.  That’s right, soon you will be able to not only match up an employee with a potential job order you will be able to match them up with a potential customer (even if they don’t have a current order) or another staffing agency that you are sharing orders with.  It will even work in reverse.  If you are in a customer’s record, you can run AutoMatch to find employee’s that might be a good fit with that particular customer.    For those of you that skill market often, this new feature will help you increase your efficiency and productivity.  Not skill marketing yet?  Never a better time than the present!

Questions about using this function or others in Avionté?  Feel free to contact me directly.

View this Tip of the Week

By Laura Schmitz

I recently discovered a short cut on how to put the little é on Avionté (e acute is the official character name , check out http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/Keyboard-shortcuts to find a whole host of shortcuts you may not have known about.)   I had what I thought was a shortcut, but this one saved an extra key stroke and didn’t require notes on how to do it on my laptop versus a traditional keyboard.  If only I had known that a year ago!

We all think we’re too busy or know enough to refresh ourselves on the tools we use and need to conduct our business every day.  The reality is that if we took a couple of hours a couple of times a year and dedicated it to learning more about those tools, we could not only learn something new (which is always rewarding) but we could find new productivity or relief for pesky functions that we do every day, but wish we could do easier or better.   Setting aside time to learn is something that few of us think about.  I believe that learning is one of the greatest ways to take care of yourself as it can relieve stress, improve brain function and lead to some great means to share information and collaborate with those around you.  All too often learning and training are set aside as too time consuming or too expensive in tight times.  In fact, training can be a great way to find savings, and the time spent can actually help leaders determine how processes are working, what needs to be changed or who needs some extra supervision or one-on-one training themselves.  Training doesn’t need to be a three-day seminar with professional speakers and rented conference rooms.  It can be as simple as a ½ hour webinar once a month or reading an article about a particular program or tool.

Another thing I like to do and participate in is forwarding information that I have found or materials I’ve received onto those colleagues, clients, friends or family that I think they would find useful for their careers or businesses.  At Avionté, we use our group emails to keep each other informed on a multitude of interesting topics and functions.  Technology changes at the speed of light, making time for learning is crucial to keep yourself and your business relevant and thriving.

If you’d like to learn more about setting up a refresher training program or if you’d like to schedule refresher training for your Avionté staffing software application, please contact me at laura@avionte.com.