Game, set, match: serving the perfect recruitment back office strategy

Summer is a time for sport – and is there a more iconic sporting event than Wimbledon? Tennis fans will soon be stocking up on strawberries and cream, while the athletes competing are already training hard to ensure they are in peak condition.
Djokovic, Federal and Nadal’s lives might be a far cry from the offices of most recruiters, but there’s a thing or two their pre-tournament prep can teach us about optimising agency performance.
When it comes to securing new business, back office improvements are often the key to ensuring you win the game, set and match. With this in mind, here are a few things recruiters can think about to help you serve the perfect operational strategy this summer.

Have a game plan

In the busy world of recruitment, it’s easy to put operational priorities at the bottom of the list. However, this can cost your business more than you realise.
When looking to innovate your recruitment back office, a good starting point is to inventory all the typical tasks your agency carries out in the space of a month – including who is responsible and roughly how much time each task takes up. If you’re logging timesheets, this information may already be available to you.
Look at which admin activities comprise the bulk of your team’s workload, how many people are involved in them, and your current processes. Could there be ways to streamline how long they take? Identifying the most troublesome tasks will help you to formulate an effective game plan.

Know your opponent

While all operational jobs have the potential to drain time, each task has its own unique challenges. Understanding what these challenges are is your first step towards solving them.
For example, if your workforce spends a lot of time managing timesheets, is it because they are being sent across in multiple layouts, which then need to be consistently formatted by a member of staff? Or is it miscalculations in expense claims that are causing a paperwork bottleneck?
Maybe it’s the invoice remittance process demanding most of your bandwidth, as colleagues spend hours on the phone, chasing late payments? Many agency bosses are forced to pay contractors out of their own pocket if this is the problem.
The more you know what you’re up against, the better you can mitigate everyday problems and cut the time and effort of back office administration. Knowledge is power, and the quickest route to a solution.

Surround yourself with a strong support team

An elite athlete contributes much of their success to the people around them; to their coaches, nutritionists, psychologists, managers and publicists. The story is no different for recruitment agencies – except it’s not just the people that you need to succeed.
For the vast majority of recruiters, the back office burden can be significantly reduced by bringing operational technology on board. A market-leading platform can enable you to automate everyday processes for managing timesheets, expenses and invoicing, taking the burden off your team’s shoulders.
Finding the right recruitment back office technology is often the gamechanger for recruitment agencies, as it enables you to collate data and send invoices quicker, securing payment sooner. This way, while the competition is still checking paperwork, you’ve moved onto your next client deal.

Learn from every performance    

Top-flight sportspeople are often separated from their rivals by their commitment to learning from and improving on their performance. The business world should be no different.
The great thing about using technology to manage your recruitment operations is that you can measure everything about your back office – from how many timesheets are outstanding, to how many invoices are overdue.
Through this insight, you can learn where change is needed most and make tangible improvements, setting targets that focus on tackling the real weaknesses within your business infrastructure.

Make sure your recruitment agency is match fit

The best in the business makes great performances look effortless, whether they’re winning Wimbledon or signing new client contractors. But those wins are the result of hard work behind the scenes, ensuring they are match fit and ready to outperform the competition.
For ambitious recruitment agencies, improving your back office processes can make a huge difference to the bottom line. By investing in technology to make critical tasks such as timesheet management and invoice processing quicker and simpler for staff to manage, you free up their time to nurture new business deals.
And with the summer holidays a ‘thinking’ time for company bosses and contractors alike, now is the perfect time to get your back office operations into winning shape.
ETZ enables recruiters to cut the time, cost and effort of business admin. Book a free demo to see how our back office software will make your agency more efficient.