Breaking Through: Leadership Disciplines of
Top Performing Staffing Firms
Barry Asin, President, SIA
basin@staffingindustry.com
@BarryAsin
SIA: What We Do
www.staffingindustry.com/Breaking-Through
Why Do So Few Staffing Firms
Make It to the Top?
Number of US Staffing Firms by Size
Source: US Economic Census, 2012 and Staffing Industry Analysts
Founded 1983
2006 Revenue: $4.7B
2016 Revenue: $10.2B
CAGR 2006-2016: 8.1%
Founded 2001
2006 Revenue: $99M
2016 Revenue: $1.6B
CAGR 2006-2016: 32.1%
Founded 1995
2006 Revenue: $296M
2016 Revenue: $1.8B
CAGR 2006-2016: 19.8%
US Staffing Industry
2006 Revenue: $117B
2016 Revenue: $137B
CAGR 2006-2016: 1.6% CAGR = Compound Annual Growth Rate
Source: SIA Largest Staffing Firms and Fastest Growing Staffing Firm Reports, 2007, 2017
What Can We Learn From Allegis?
Break Through Growth Firms
Break Through Growth Firms
Break Through Growth Firms
Overcoming Growth Barriers
Five Disciplines of Top Performing
Staffing Firms
Five Disciplines of Top Performing
Staffing Firms
Commitment
• Starts at the top
• What is your “WHY”?
• Willingness to sacrifice and take on Risk
– Financial
– Professional
– Personal
Commitment in Action
Dan Campbell, Hire Dynamics Jeff Bowling, The Delta Companies
Five Disciplines of Top Performing
Staffing Firms
Direction – A Winning Strategy and the
Resources to Execute it
• Develop a defensible competitive/ market
strategy that enhances growth opportunities
• Build well-aligned operational capabilities
• Ongoing assessment and adaptation
Operational Capabilities Aligned with
Strategy
• Sales strategies aligned
• Delivery capabilities to support
• Scalable
• Financial and other resources to support the
strategy
Assess and Adapt
Source: Staffing Industry Analysts
140.7
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
US Staffing Revenue ($B): 1995-2017
US Staffing Market Has Nearly
Doubled in the Past 20 Years
Staffing Increasingly Professional
Source: SIA US Staffing Industry Forecast, September 2017
Percent of US Temp Staffing Spend by Skill
$3,500,000,000,000
What Got Us Here, Won’t Get Us There
Strategies for Managing a Contingent
Workforce
Source: SIA Workforce Solutions Buyers Survey, 2017
A More Strategic Future for Contingent
Work?
Source: SIA Workforce Solutions Buyers Survey, 2017
The Workforce Solutions
Ecosystem:
Evolving to A More
Complex World
Top 50
firms €6.1
billion
Online Platforms Bring the Potential for
Disruption
Source: Staffing Industry Analysts
Pure online
marketplace/
technology
Hybrid
model/offerings
Traditional
staffing/pure
service
provider
The Great Convergence?
Online Staffing Interest Growing
Source: SIA 2017 Contingent Workforce Buyers Survey, Upwork public statements 2018
The only bad option? Denial!
Connecting & Optimizing the Talent Supply Chain
Contingent and workforce professionals gather for the award-winning Collaboration in the Gig
Economy event where all players in the talent supply chain join together to explore the new
frontiers of the workforce solutions ecosystem. Collaborate with the most advanced buyers of
staffing and workforce solutions.
Register now at www.collaborationgigeconomy.com
October 4-5, 2018
Omni Dallas Hotel | Dallas, TX
www.collaborationgigeconomy.co
m @SIAGigE #GigE2018
AI can go far beyond the recruiter
Impacts on Staffing
 Sourcing
 Screening
 Matching
 Optimization
 Prediction
Direction in Action
Cindy Pasky,
Strategic Staffing Solutions
Mark Eldridge, ALKU
Five Disciplines of Top Performing
Staffing Firms
“Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast…”
“…and Organization
Structure for Lunch”
What is Culture?
• Every organization has a culture
• A high performance culture has
– A shared belief system and “story”
– A common goal
• Culture provides unwritten rules of behavior
Reinforcing the Culture
• Align with strategy, driven from the top
• Establish a shared belief system
• Develop cohesive teams
• Delegate cultural leadership
• “Who you hire, fire and promote”
Culture in Action
Andrew Limouris, Medix Jay Cohen, Signature Consultants
Five Disciplines of Top Performing
Staffing Firms
Talent Development
• Hiring
• Evaluation
• Training and Development
• Motivation “When is the right time to hire a sales
person or a recruiter? …Whenever you
have found the right person.”
Mark Eldridge, ALKU
Five Disciplines of Top Performing
Staffing Firms
Execution
• Identification of Best Practices
• Scaling Key Processes
• Replication over Multiple Operations
Breaking Through: Leadership Disciplines of
Top Performing Staffing Firms
Barry Asin, President, SIA
basin@staffingindustry.com
@BarryAsin

Breaking Through: Leadership Disciplines of Top Performing Staffing Firms - Barry Asin

Editor's Notes

  • #5 Ask – how many of your orgs revenue over 100M? Over 50M? Over 10M How many don’t know your organizations revenue?
  • #6 Some of my interest in this topic inspired by companies like these. Best example perhaps companies like Allegis group – Allegis founded in 1983 and grew from zero to now over 10B globally. The vast majority of that organically, with only small acquistions. They have managed to grow 5 times faster than the market in past 10 years and already a 5B company. So, maybe Allegis is just a one off? Something in the water, very well capitalized or countless other reasons it couldn’t be replicated. Except for we’ve got at least two other examples of companies who have gone big based on people who left Allegis and founded their own companies using the same principles and models [CLICK] Apex Systems – founded in 1995, grew to 1.8B by 2016 for a nearly 20% CAGR and sold to On Assignment for $700M. Big in the large account space and did have an acquisition of about 200M for Creative Circle in their 2016 numbers [CLICK] Insight Global, maybe the most of them all – Founded in 2001 Glenn Johnson and Scott Madden, former Allegis recruiters, by 2006 had revenue of 98,978K = 99M. 2016 revenue of $1.6B and grown at an average growth rate of 32% per year, every year since 2001. [CLICK] And to put in context, all this at a time of the great recession! Staffing industry over that period grew at an average 1.6% per year!
  • #7 Looked at those and then companies who have been on our fastest growing list and have grown to top of the industry
  • #10 Real Barriers to Growth Answer to Break Through always or almost always about Leadership!
  • #11 So what is different about these firms? These firms that have broken through the barriers to growth? In a nutshell, it’s leadership and the disciplines of the leaders and leadership team. What we found in common among all these companies were Five Disciplines and arranged from left to right strategic to tactical – need have the first in order to get to the next ones and be successful. They build on each other! Commitment: Growth is a priority for the leadership team and decisions are made to achieve goals. Make the needed sacrifices to grow and the tough choices. There is no easy way to succeed, it’s a huge amount of work and often requires painful choices and significant personal financial risk. Direction: A clear winning strategy and the resources to implement it – a good market to be in and a good position within that market. Been harder to be one of our breakthrough firms in office clerical and industrial then it was in IT or Healthcare for example Culture: An intentional culture focused on driving high levels of performance. Driven largely by who you hire, who you fire and who your promote. Messages through actions of the top executives of what is good, what is bad and what will bring us success Talent Development: A focus on hiring, training and developing the next generation of leaders. This was huge – the only way to grow need to grow the team and their capabilities. More than anything I see companies like Allegis and its spin offs as masters of building and developing leadership. Execution: Enabling sales and recruiting teams to perform and deliver excellent service. All the processes, metrics, compensation plans and scalable practices
  • #12  Commitment: Growth is a priority for the leadership team and decisions are made to achieve goals. Make the needed sacrifices to grow and the tough choices. There is no easy way to succeed, it’s a huge amount of work and often requires painful choices and significant personal financial risk.
  • #13 What is your why? The purpose, cause or belief that inspires you to do what you do Lifestyle business is OK, but don’t confuse that with being committed to growth? Why do companies grow? Because the leader passionately believes that they will grow and that they must grow!
  • #14 The Delta Companies (Founded 2001, $115M in 2016, Healthcare/Locum Tenens) A “credit card” moment Friends or growth? Hire Dynamics (Founded in 2001, $121M in 2016, Industrial) Advisory Board Continuous learning
  • #15 Direction: A clear winning strategy and the resources to implement it – a good market to be in and a good position within that market. Been harder to be one of our breakthrough firms in office clerical and industrial then it was in IT or Healthcare for example
  • #17 Sales strategies must allow you to identify and influence the right buyers Delivery capabilities must match the success factors of your target accounts Both sales and delivery must be able to scale in conjunction with one another Finance/resources to support the strategy
  • #18 To Choose a Strategy and Maintain Competitive Differentiation, Leaders Must Constantly Assess and Adapt to Market Trends and Changes in Client Needs
  • #19 What do you need to build a strategy and to assess and adapt that strategy over time? We believe a solid understanding of the market is key – data, information and ultimately knowledge Been a pretty good place to be last twenty years 1997 to 2017. Today the staffing industry exceeds $140 Billion in revenue in the US, nearly double levels seen 20 years ago. That’s pretty good, particularly because it includes two recessions, including the great recession of 2008 that caused industry revenue to drop by one third from peak levels
  • #20 Not only has usage grown but it has become more strategic Professional skilled roles now a majority of revenue in staffing with lower skills like industrial and office clerical, (those two original views of staffing) only about 40% of revenue in the industry
  • #21 The other answer to where we’ve been is that we are starting to see ourselves as something bigger than just staffing What is that bigger thing? One way to answer is with this number. It’s an awful big number – a 13 digit number 3.5 Trillion, in case you are having trouble counting zeros. That is our estimate of the size of the Global Gig Economy Puts this broader category on par with the largest global industries out there Contemplate $3 Trillion in annual spend Compared to big global industries it is right up there with IT Services or Food and Retail The surprise, if there is one for folks in this room is the sheer size of the gig economy. Most people feel like it’s a new phenomena that just started a couple years ago
  • #22 As an industry, we’ve come to a pretty amazing place. TO go further, it means changing gears and embracing different ways of thinking about your business and your leadership. That I think is the central challenge for leaders in staffing and workforce solutions as we look toward the next decade and beyond
  • #24 More interesting is when we ask about the future. What are you looking at in next two years? I believe there are signs of a more strategic future for contingent work and contingent workforce strategies. This slide illustrates it Two most mentioned items companies exploring – Total Talent Acquisition and Contingent work integrated to corporate strategic planning. Half of companies surveyed are working on it and exploring it. Been this way for a while on integrating to strategic planning. It’s hard to do! But a sign that being able to act as a strategic partner increasingly of importance – not a vendor but a proactive partner is key. And total talent acquisition, for those not familiar with the term is the idea of having one integrated strategy for all talent – traditional full time workers, temp workers, independent contractors or consultants or outsourced service providers. Companies realizing that they may be making tactical decisions that aren’t optimal for their overall talent strategy – Answering the question, what is the best resource to get this particular type of work done? See continued interest in global management and in managing SOW as well as analytics Company CW career site – a sign of a total talent approach! In past co-employment fears might have kept companies from ever mentioning contingent workers
  • #25 Today there is a whole Ecosystem of Services revolving around the staffing industry. This has been an amazing evolution and professionalization of the industry! The Workforce Solutions Ecosystem of third party HR solutions includes process outsourcing firms, payrolling and compliance, contracting and consulting as well as talent acquisition technology and a whole raft of other workforce solutions. This has been a major evolution for the industry and for those around it.
  • #26 25
  • #27 Our take on this is not as much a story of disruption as it is of convergence Seeing online staffing firms adding human based services and staffing firms adding tech forward platforms to their business Now perhaps seeing the great convergence underway Seeing traditional staffing firms respond to growth of online platforms Adecco launch of Adia and now YOSS and most recently Vettery in the full time perm hiring space Randstad acquires TWAGO – Europes largest freelance platform TrueBlue with launch of Jobstack – allowing direct placement of their workers via the JobStack app Among many others And seeing some signs of convergence from the tech first platform players Upwork with Upwork Pro – instead of recruiters we have talent specialists helping clients get just the right freelancer for them And Upwork Enterprise – And even freelancer now has a enterprise offering
  • #28 Good news for those with traditional business models, this doesn’t currently seem to be going at the pace of VMS adoption in mid 2000’s. I think points to the complexity of the complete end to end transaction involved in acquiring talent, more complex than just managing the job order and submittal process.
  • #29 It turns out, the only bad option is DENIAL! Head in the sand and hoping it all would go away. Or lashing out and trying to put the genie back in the bottle. We’ve learned time and again when it comes to a conflict between your business model and the future, the future always wins!
  • #31 Chatbots just the beginning of impact of AI on staffing and the ecosystem Chatbots and sourcing Of course AI Can go way beyond sourcing candidates – big implications for talent acquisition Predicting hires AI related graphic Discuss Program optimization Market bill rates – how to get the best talent at the best price In fact, a lot of the tasks currently done by recruiters can and I believe will eventually be done by AI. Question then becomes, what will recruiters do? And how many will you need?
  • #33  Culture: An intentional culture focused on driving high levels of performance. Driven largely by who you hire, who you fire and who your promote. Messages through actions of the top executives of what is good, what is bad and what will bring us success
  • #35  Every org has a culture – but is it a high performance culture? Could be culture of sloth and indifference. Or infighting and gossip! Has anyone ever worked in one of those? Did they have a cool mission statement and vision? Shared beliefs and unifying story – tell each other a story Can have all the great values and statements about culture, but ultimately actions speak. Beyond your mission and vision – that is just the start and hopefully aligned Who you hire, fire and promote: All the leaders we spoke to had a culturally defining moment – would they fire a top producer who was a bad cultural fit – yelling and screaming and bullying in a culture built around teamwork/caring?
  • #36 Must align with strategy and driven from top – org takes it cues from leader, can’t be someone you are not! Shared beliefs
  • #37 Medix (Andrew Limouris, Founded 2001, Healthcare/IT/) Values and purpose driven – very personal “Medix, we got your back” Showing up for people in good times and bad Firing vendors/partners who don’t fit Signature Consultants Values and stories , history and work ethic High performance and accountability are key Telling somebody that you are going to do something and then not doing it is lying, plain and simple High emphasis on accountability – do what you say you will do
  • #38  Talent Development: A focus on hiring, training and developing the next generation of leaders. This was huge – the only way to grow need to grow the team and their capabilities. More than anything I see companies like Allegis and its spin offs as masters of building and developing leadership.
  • #40  Execution: Enabling sales and recruiting teams to perform and deliver excellent service. All the processes, metrics, compensation plans and scalable practices