These days whether you are in business for yourself or you're working for the man you have something always on your mind...right?
You worry if your job will be here tomorrow or if your employer will stay in business long enough for you to retire. Trucking companies are worrying about the price of diesel . Best Buy is trying not to go the way of Circuit City. The Post Office is laying off people left and right. You haven't had a raise in five years but you can't move to find a better job cause you can't sell your house.
So, what kind of things do you think us guys in the "staffing industry" are worrying about these days? I mean what can we possibly have to worry about. After all, a lot of people out there think we have a license to print money. I mean when you pay someone $8.00 per hour and charge $11.20 per hour we are putting three bucks in the drawer for every hour we have someone work..I mean do the math. If it was only that easy.
To make you feel better, I worry a lot...daily, sometimes hourly and at night before bedtime. Let me share. It might make you feel better.
Every day we put out to work about 700-800 employees (that we don't supervise) to work in a variety of positions within a variety of manufacturing facilities doing hard physical labor....in most cases. I worry (and pray sometimes) that they will all arrive back home in the same shape they left before going to work. And when one gets hurt, I don't sleep well until I know the severity of the claim and that all will be good.
We are in a very competitive business. Our clients want our services to relieve many of the hassles hiring on your own brings....they don't want red tape.
As a result, each and every day we are the bank for all of our clients. We pay all the costs of supplying labor in real time while waiting as much as 30 to 60 days (or longer) to recoup our investment. And because of that "red tape" factor we do this based on good faith ....no contracts or collateral.
We are the bank that provides unsecured loans. Most of the time it all works out. Sometimes it does not. I worry about getting paid and the consequences of not.
It's not really accurate to say that we worry around here about staying out of jail but with all the mandates required by all levels of government concerning hiring and employment it does cause one to pause.
One only has to look at the size of the wall required to post all the rules and regulations concerning employment practices and employee rights to understand this one. And it is not enough to follow the rules but you have to keep current on the rules and the changes that almost never are communicated to you from the source.
Everyday around here when we pick up our mail the standing line is "did we get sued today"?
In our line of work, our product is having people with the right skill levels available on a moment's notice to go to work for our various clients. It sounds like an easy thing to do with the unemployment levels being what they are locally. Not necessarily true.
The talent pool of available qualified people with a high school diploma, that can pass a drug test and have a relatively clean criminal background is not a big one. And when you discount the folks that are not motivated to work for the prevailing temp wage rate or are collecting unemployment benefits that make it not worth getting out of bed the pool has again been downsized.
So, imagine running out of beer in the third inning of a Cleveland Indians game in July.....that is what not having people feels like around here at times.
And then there is technology and the "cloud" and hoping that we have no glitches in getting 700 people paid every week with the money getting loaded timely on the pay cards. Learning last November that payroll tax rates went up retroactive to the beginning of the year and having to plead for an $.09/hour increase to cover a small portion of the increase... and so on and so on .
What all this means I suppose is that most things in life that are worth doing are not easy. When it gets hard around I tell people that "if it was easy everyone would be doing it." I guess these things are true for everyone one of us....hopefully we don't let it spill over, particularly to you folks that give us the opportunity to worry everyday!
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