So what does good staff planning look like in times of great market uncertainty? Read on for some insights:
Assessing the impact of COVID-19 on the hiring landscape
The Corona pandemic has a drastic impact on hiring: according to Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA), 38% of companies globally have temporarily paused all their talent acquisition. Another 17% of companies reduced the number of planned hires in 2020.
Within the DACH labour market the trends have been slightly more positive. According to a survey of more than 1’200 HR professionals by XING, 47% of respondents in Switzerland are sticking to their staff planning. Only 21% of companies in Germany, Austria or Switzerland have stopped recruiting altogether, while 20% are hiring fewer staff than originally planned. 7% of companies stated that they had not yet dealt with the consequences of Corona on personnel planning.
However, despite all of this, 73% of the Swiss companies surveyed onboarded new staff since the start of the Corona crisis in mid-March 2020.
Temporary staffing: what is it and how is it used to navigate uncertainty?
Businesses use temporary staff to reshape and respond to a COVID-19 economy where customer behaviour and demand varies drastically day by day. Throughout extended lockdowns and changing guidelines, temporary staffing provides a clear solution for overcoming hiring risk and last-minute operational gaps.
A temporary workforce also affords flexibility to allow for ease of scaling. In an uncertain market where ramping up and down with demand is essential to protect budgets and maximise profits, responsive staffing is not only critical for recovery, but growth too.
A Coople survey with 185 Swiss companies in September 2020 revealed that companies with flexible staff expect to recover more quickly from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic than those that employ only permanent staff. Most companies employing temporary workers expect to recover within 4-12 months, whereas the majority of companies that do not hire temporary workers expect that it will take more than 12 months to recover.
How Flaschenpost and a supermarket chain confidently navigated the crisis with flexible staff from Coople.
Digital staffing platforms such as Coople match flexible, temporary workers with employers in need of temporary staff with specific skills. Throughout the pandemic, Coople has supported hiring companies such as Flaschenpost and a nationwide supermarket chain in finding quality staff across the Retail & Logistics, Office and Cleaning sectors.
- Flaschenpost, the largest online wine shop in Switzerland, urgently needed to increase its workforce to cope with the huge increase in demand as a result of COVID-19.With the help of Coople’s flexible workforce, Flaschenpost was able to build up a favourites pool of 25 flexible workers within a very short time, having 11 favourite workers on duty at any one time for 5 days per week.
- A discount supermarket chain worked with Coople to cope with exceptionally high demand as well as to ensure the safety of consumers in their shops after the outbreak of the coronavirus. Coople’s unique algorithm enabled the supermarket chain to recruit more than 600 professionals in retail, logistics and security & hygiene across Switzerland in less than 48 hours. Thanks to the flexibility of the Coople platform, the supermarket was also able to scale down immediately when security measures were relaxed again.
Are you ready to confidently lead your company out of the crisis together with Coople? Click here to find out how to make your workforce planning resistant to market uncertainty.