Hourly Staffing Challenges - is it time for a better mousetrap?

Why are we here?  No, this isn't some philosophical question of existence.  I mean - why are we here here talking about temporary labor or staffing?

If you you have work that needs to be done there is certainly no shortage of staffing companies around; just look online (Or in a phone book. Yes, many people still use those).  You can buy hours and hours of labor from any number of sources and, by and large, they will do a good job of providing a body.  Before I go any farther, please understand that I believe there will always be a need for that type of basic buyer-supplier service, it is just that sometimes you need more...

The transactional unit from a contract labor provider, staffing source, temporary company, etc, is the HOUR.  Yes, it is a person, but you are buying that person's time by the hour.  so you are buying an HOUR.  What you are trying to "get" is something very different.  You are trying to get the output of that person's hour.  You are buying input, but you want/need output.

This brings us to my position and belief: the fundamental structure of the hourly labor model is flawed.  Maybe not in every business situation, but in a lot of them.

This hours worth of input may yield a different amount of output than that hour. So the challenge for a business utilizing the hourly model is to understand this dynamic, exert time and energy and effort to normalize it through processes, and then develop some way to have a relatively predictable labor cost per unit produced, shipped, inspected, etc. 

What about this idea?  What if the provider of labor took on all of that for you?  What if they owned the risk of productivity, compliance, turnover, safety, training, demand variability, attendance, rework, etc and delivered the output of all of that as a complete package that actually lowered your total cost to operate?   And they did it in your facility, under your watchful eye, aligned with your key performance metrics, and they brought in their own resources  to continually look for areas of improvement on your behalf? 

Well. that's why we are here.

ShareThis