Automation in the temporary employment industry

Challenges in the temporary employment industry

The temporary employment industry has grown considerably over the past 10 years. More and more companies are trying to fill some of their vacancies flexibly to make it easier to switch on and off. But the laws and regulations for the temporary employment industry have also changed a lot. All challenges that allow temporary employment agencies to grow on the one hand, but also increasingly face challenges in managing the large number of customers and candidates, and especially the administration around them.

Decentralized vs. central view on administration

At employment agencies, you have traditionally found many processes that are still often done by hand. There are two flavors in how these are executed, namely decentralized vs. central. In employment agencies that have arranged their administrative processes decentrally, the branches and intermediaries themselves are responsible for the administrative actions. The advantage is that they have more specific knowledge about the customer or candidate in question, the only question is to what extent this is really important for the administration. A central approach has created a central back office that takes administrative actions away from the branches and the intermediaries as much as possible. The advantage is that they therefore have more time to work with customers and candidates, wherever the focus should be.

Key processes

There are a few administrative processes that are crucial for the smooth running of an employment process. One of these is the maintenance of the candidate and placement contracts. These must be correct at all times and be renewed or terminated at the right time. The hours worked must also be checked, processed and remunerated, often weekly. In addition, there are always several separate lists that need to be followed up. Are there still candidates who are close to their birthday and face a new minimum wage? Or is there a candidate whose phase is about to expire and should receive a new contract? These are examples of processes that disrupt work and can be forgotten when busy. It is also nice to get insight into who is sick and who is better, so that these people can be deployed again as soon as possible.

RPA as a tool for automating processes

There are several ways to automate processes and many software packages offer good solutions for automating certain flows. However, these are all limited to the possibilities within one package. Often, processes involve multiple packages or have a communication aspect via mail or chat. RPA offers a good solution for these processes.

RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation and what it actually does is mimic a user's actions to handle processes. The biggest advantages are that they work quickly and error-free whenever you want. In addition, they are cheaper than an employee and implemented quickly.

An example of an RPA robot that is already running at a VionA customer is used to check daily which candidates need to be renewed. The robot then logs into the customer's system to retrieve all relevant information and then emails the appropriate contact person asking what to do with this contract. The response is then processed automatically and the new contract is created and sent to the candidate for signature. Once the new contract has actually started, the robot can terminate the old one for you, without you having to think about it. Bas Schoorl from Employment Agency Luba says the following about it: “For Luba, it is a big time saver that the contract extensions are carried out by the robot. This leaves us with time to match our customers and candidates even faster.”

“For Luba, it is a big time saver that the contract extensions are carried out by the robot. This leaves us with time to match our customers and candidates even faster.”

Robots can also be used, for example, to calculate bonuses for employees, to synchronize illness reports between different systems, to process wage and rate changes in (CAO) changes, or to 'scrape' websites for specific candidates or vacancies.

Deploying RPA

RPA is increasingly being used by employment agencies. Here you can choose to purchase software yourself and hire someone with knowledge of it to build and maintain the robots. A new, interesting alternative is to purchase automations as a service, where the robots run in the cloud (cloud RPA). Here, the entire process, from assessing which processes are suitable, recording them, building the robot and maintaining it, is offered as a service for a fixed amount per month. This can easily be compared to the savings it provides.

Automation with VionA

As a Virtual Assistant, VionA offers automations as a service. To do this, she uses RPA technology, among other things. She already does this for several employment agencies, giving her a good idea of the issues that lie ahead and where the biggest savings and benefits for the organization can be found.

Take a look at the following cases for more inspiration:

• Luba
• ONE People Services
• SBA Flex