A 3-Step Approach to Evaluating Key Staffing Metrics

In today’s increasingly dynamic and data-driven staffing industry, the use of analytics has become an essential way to evaluate the success (or failure) of your business’ efforts to fuel growth. It’s no surprise, however, that staffing firms have difficulty adopting this metrics-driven mindset: it’s thought to be time-consuming and difficult to master. But it doesn’t have to be. If you want a better understanding of your bookings and employee and client activity, you can start by understanding the fundamentals of the 3 types of staffing metrics: historical, real-time and predictive!

Learn from the Past

When first looking at the broad spectrum of your data, you will probably notice that most of your staffing metrics are historical, which means they’re based on past data. They are a great rear-view look into metrics that can be used as a benchmark for future forecasting and are also perfect for identifying patterns and trends within your business. For example, drilling into your job orders can provide insights into how your pipeline has changed over time. This is important because unlocking your historical data provides insights into the story behind the numbers, translating data into actionable intelligence that helps you make accurate assumptions about your business practices.

There’s No Time like the Present

When you are making important business decisions, you want the most current data available. What’s more current than real-time? Real-time metrics are ideal for giving insights into your team’s performance as it’s happening and helps you make better decisions on a daily basis. Activity metrics, for example, allow you to compare activity across employees and clients to help maximize the day-to-day productivity of your sales reps. Real-time metrics can give you an immediate snapshot of what’s working and not working, optimizing the sourcing and hiring of talent by eliminating wasted resources and focusing on the recruiting efforts that work.

Look into the Future

The third set of metrics is high-impact predictive measures, which are not only affecting the way you manage your business, but change the way you find and retain top talent. These future-focused KPIs predict either upcoming recruiting problems or opportunities, such as forecasting new business and pipeline coverage. By combining historical data with a real-time view of your analytics, you can better predict the future and prepare for what’s to come accordingly. Leveraged efficiently, predictive analytics help you better anticipate and create economic value from your data to help you become more competitive and ultimately, more successful.

So, if you’re not sure what historical data you need or you’d just like further information, tune into our blog next week as we dig deeper into analyzing historical metrics!