By Greg Detter, Senior Vice President, Robert Half
I once worked with a company I considered to be the perfect client. Perpetually organized, they provided detailed job descriptions and consistently got back to us quickly with feedback on our candidates.
Over the years, my Robert Half team and I helped them find and hire many employees — some permanent placements on their marketing team and several contract roles for their in-house creative department. And like all our clients, I appreciated the relationship. But more than anything, I loved working with them because the talent we placed loved working with them.
As I said, they were pretty much what I would consider an ideal client. And like any of the companies and professionals we work with, I tried to give them our top-notch service. But a panicked phone call one early December afternoon made me realize that I hadn’t fully educated them on the ways Robert Half could support them through challenging and busy times.
“I know this is a long shot,” the creative services manager said. “Any chance you’ve got a couple of production artists who could just help us out, real short-term, on a few projects?”
I was dumbfounded — this is exactly what we could do to support their team and business. I’d worked with them for years, taken them to lunch, had countless conversations and made myriad placements, yet they didn’t know all the ways we could help them.
I’ll skip through the rest of the dialogue where I silently kicked myself for not fully explaining every staffing option and fast-forward to the part where two production artists started with them the very next day, helping them off and on for the rest of the month.
The many advantages of a scalable staffing approach
In addition to full-time placements and long-term contract work, many companies now use a scalable staffing model to help manage costs and ensure they never miss a deadline. These companies keep their full-time staff small, and as the workload ebbs and flows, so do their freelance or contract staff.
Maybe your user experience (UX) team is lean and mean and handles the workload most of the time. Occasionally, the projects begin to pile up, so you bring in a UX designer or researcher to help just with the projects that need extra support. Or, maybe it’s a designer, copywriter, proofreader, or PowerPoint specialist to help you tackle project work as it comes in.
This cost-effective staffing approach is a great way to go no matter the time of year, but especially around the holidays and even more so in times of economic uncertainty. For many of us, work doesn’t stop around the holidays, and with vacationing staff and year-end deadlines, it can be really tricky to keep projects moving.
So, as you begin planning for the holidays and beyond, consider all the advantages of scalable staffing — and cover all your bases while staying within your budget.
Let Robert Half help you keep projects on track
Robert Half can help you hire marketing and creative professionals to support your business needs during the holidays, or any time of year. Get in touch with us today to learn more about our services.
Follow Greg Detter on LinkedIn.
