Business intelligence in the temporary staffing sector: how to analyse data to optimise the use of temporary workers?

Business Intelligence and Big Data

The term business intelligence entered professional jargon alongside big data, which describes today’s capacity to handle vast amounts of information. Big data is measured in terabytes—equivalent to 1,000 billion bytes. Confronted with such massive datasets, BI has become a vital tool, enabling us to sort, interpret, and act on the vast amounts of data collected.

BI typically employs data analysis tools that measure and manage the effectiveness of actions across various domains: customer relations, new product launches, and recruitment campaigns, to name a few.

The process of data analysis involves several key stages:

1. Collecting and sorting the relevant data.
2. Analysing and interpreting the insights revealed by the data.
3. Establishing and monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs).
4. Optimising processes based on these KPIs.

Data analysis only proves useful when it drives action, which is subsequently measured to create a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement.

Data Analysis in the Temporary Employment Sector

When applied to the temporary staffing sector, business intelligence offers several advantages: reducing costs, saving time, and identifying areas for improvement.

Reducing the Costs of Temporary Employment

Implementing effective indicators allows organisations to precisely calculate costs, whether these are internal or invoiced by external providers.

For example:

• For a temporary vacancy, how many agencies were contacted?
• How much time did HR spend drafting the assignment contract and liaising with the agency?

To determine the return on investment (ROI) of a contingent workforce management software program, it’s essential to identify, with supporting data, the stages where the tool’s impact is most critical.

Faster and more accurate contingent workforce management

Data analysis enables a detailed understanding of every stage of the temporary staffing  process—an often complex workflow. By gathering relevant data, from the publication of a job assignment to its completion, organisations can calculate their applicant conversion rate: the number of applications received for every temp worker hired.

But the possibilities don’t stop there:

• How much time does HR dedicate to managing a temporary assignment lasting only a few days?
• How can this time be reduced through digital tools?
• How can a talent pool be optimised, ensuring that top candidates can easily update their availability?

Moreover, data and KPIs should illuminate areas where processes are underperforming.
For instance:

• A low response rate to a job posting might indicate that the ad is not placed on the appropriate platform.

By identifying bottlenecks at each stage, organisations can develop optimisation strategies and create actionable improvement plans.

What Are the Key KPIs in the Temporary Employment Industry?

In an era of vast data, the challenge often lies in isolating the most relevant data to establish meaningful KPIs. In contingent staffing, as elsewhere, KPIs fall into three primary categories:

1. Quantitative KPIs.
2. Qualitative KPIs.
3. KPIs for optimising supplier relationships.

Quantitative KPIs

These metrics measure temporary work activity in numerical terms, including:

• Time-based metrics: The duration of assignments, response times to interview requests, or information queries.
• Financial metrics: Invoicing data, such as number, value, or trends over time.
• Volume-based metrics: The number of applications received, the number of assignments completed annually, or seasonal fluctuations in temp staffing.

Qualitative KPIs

Qualitative metrics delve deeper into performance aspects, such as:

• The number of unfilled job requests.
• The reasons for requiring temporary staff.
• The time spent on a single assignment, from defining the role to evaluating its outcomes.
• Evaluations of:
  • Candidate sources.
  • The candidate’s experience throughout the process.
  • The onboarding process for temporary workers.

A detailed understanding of these qualitative aspects enables the creation of effective action plans for both clients and service providers. This ensures improved management of specific risks and challenges, whether they are regulatory, HR-related, financial, or operational.

KPIs for Optimising Supplier Relationships

Certain KPIs are invaluable when assessing relationships with service providers. For example:

• The number of applications submitted per agency, broken down by location and qualification.
• Correlating these data with proposed rates can provide critical insights for negotiating framework agreements.

Conclusion

When temporary employment expenditure exceeds £3m per year, it becomes essential to adopt a tool that can automatically detect discrepancies, saving between 0.5% and 1.5% of annual costs on average.

Business intelligence not only enables cost optimisation but also improves processes and decision-making, ensuring that the temporary employment sector becomes more efficient and responsive to evolving demands.