Situation:
A large medical and academic area in a major U.S. city is home to one of the premier medical, research, and academic communities in the world.

One million patients visit the community’s hospitals, 37,000 employees work in the area, and 15,000 students attend school there. It’s a busy place, which prompted the establishment of an umbrella charitable community organization some 30 years ago to develop and implement programs that assist people and institutions in the area. The organization plans and coordinates community development and facilitates efficient traffic flow and communications within the area. To that end, the community organization developed and managed a state-of-the-art telecommunications system for several prominent area institutions. The system includes a call center that operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In a market where talented workers are at a premium and where high turnover is notorious, the call center needed staff with flexible schedules and the discipline to commit to strict attendance and punctuality policies. The call center also wanted workers with previous call center experience and fluent bilingual speaking skills.

Solution:
To help meet the call center’s need for a skilled, flexible, and reliable work force, the organization turned to a leading staffing firm in the area, a member company of the American Staffing Association. The firm helped manage the challenging recruiting and hiring process for the community organization’s call center. The staffing firm screened all candidates and then conducted customized tests on the most qualified. To increase retention of call center workers, the staffing firm offered its temporary employees health insurance, career counseling, and a stable work environment.

Results:
Impressed with the staffing firm’s performance, the community organization repeatedly renewed its contract. Delivering quality staff in a timely manner and efficiently overseeing a complex assignment earned the staffing firm additional assignments, including staffing a large team for college registrations. The community organization has also tapped into the staffing firm’s deep pool of candidates for filling permanent positions, using a temp-to-hire strategy. “The staffing firm’s work force is very important to us and serves an important purpose for our operations,” says the community organization’s director of telecommunications and customer care. “As our staffing partner, the staffing firm understands our core business well and plays an essential role in screening and supplying a temporary work force that allows us to be flexible and gives us access to important human resources.”