Original article by, Vicky Valet
When the coronavirus started to spread across the United States in February, David Savitsky, cofounder and CEO of ATC Healthcare Services, wasted no time preparing his team. He knew that hospitals in New York City would need support, and his temporary staffing firm would have a role to play on the frontlines. By the end of March, his prediction had proved correct, and ATC Healthcare had staffed New York City hospitals with hundreds of nurses from throughout the country and increased its business by 35%. “They wanted to do the meaningful, necessary work to take care of the people who were affected by the pandemic,” Savitsky says. “Our role is really to find jobs for people, find institutions that are looking for personnel and facilitate that.”
ATC Healthcare, based in North New Hyde Park, New York, is just one of more than 10,000 temporary staffing agencies in the U.S. that connect contract employees and employers. But with so many firms to choose from, how can candidates and companies find those that suit their unique needs?
Forbes partnered with market research company Statista to simplify the process with our inaugural ranking of America’s best temporary staffing firms. The list was compiled by surveying 26,000 recruiters and 5,400 job candidates and human resources managers who have worked with such firms. The 138 firms that received the most recommendations are ranked according to star ratings: five stars for the first half of awarded companies and four stars for the second half.
Less than 2% of American employees hold contract roles, and of those who do, 64% say they’ve turned to temporary work to help land a permanent position or fill a resume gap. The latter is the case for many of the nurses that ATC Healthcare—one of the five-star firms ranked on this list—helped place at the height of the pandemic. “Many physician offices closed, especially in March and April, so a lot of clinical staff were looking for employment,” Savitsky says. In addition to placing medical professionals at hospitals and nursing homes in 29 states, ATC Healthcare has worked to ensure the safety of those environments. “If there was a facility that we were not comfortable with because they were not providing protective gear to employees, we told them that we would not supply them with personnel,” Savitsky says.
Nearly 3,000 miles west in Bellevue, Washington, Pace Staffing Network has also pivoted its services as a result of the pandemic, but for a very different reason. After seeing its business decline by 50%, the five-star agency—which helps businesses in the Pacific Northwest fill accounting, administrative, customer service, marketing, non-clinical healthcare and sales roles—the firm started offering on-demand, by-the-hour services. “A lot of small to medium-sized employers aren’t in the financial place right now where they can afford an annual salary fee or have an employee long term,” says Sara Bennett, director of marketing and communications at Pace Staffing Network. In May, however, requests for staffing services started to increase, and by late June, 70% of its business had returned. Because of the flexibility temporary staffing affords employees and employers alike, Bennett believes the future is bright. “Temp staffing is going to see a huge resurgence in the coming months, because employers don’t necessarily have the foresight to know how they’re going to rebuild,” she says. “Through temporary or temp-to-hire employees, you can really react to the volatility of the market.”
Atlanta, Georgia-headquartered Lucas Group has taken a similar approach. The firm, which places contract employees in fields from accounting to manufacturing in 35 states, is no stranger to Forbes’ rankings: Lucas Group claimed the No. 5 and No. 8 spots on this year’s editions of America’s best professional and executive recruiting firms, respectively, before earning a five-star rating on this list. When its contract business declined at the height of the pandemic, it embraced a more consultative role, helping companies and candidates make decisions about their futures when the state of the economy was anything but certain. “How to make a hiring decision when you can’t shake a person’s hand is something that we’ve talked to a number of our clients about,” says David Armendariz, the general manager of the Information Technology division at Lucas Group. “On the candidate side, it’s the same thing. People are having to make career choices without being able to see the inside of an office, so we’re helping our clients create communication, virtual environments and ways to see the culture of a company.”
When the employment market stabilizes, Armendariz doesn’t expect staffing to return to business as usual, or at least not as defined earlier this year. But he’s confident in the industry’s ability to adapt. “The way in which people will work and how they will work for the foreseeable future will likely be different. There may be people who have historically been permanent employees of companies who now or maybe the rest of their careers will be contract employees,” he says. “We have to throw out the old playbook.”
Methodology
To determine the list, Statista surveyed 26,000 recruiters and 5,400 job candidates and human resources managers who have worked with temporary staffing firms. Respondents were asked to nominate up to 10 temporary staffing firms with which they had experience working; self-nominations were not considered. Some 6,400 nominations were collected, and Statista identified those firms with the highest number of recommendations and organized them into star ratings: five stars for the first half of awarded companies and four stars for the second half. A total of 138 temporary staffing firms made the final ranking.
Original article by, Vicky Valet