This innovative new model of remote staffing is helping companies like Google, Apple, and Zendesk do just that.
While it seems almost every aspect of business has innovated in the past 10-20 years, staffing and recruiting have remained in the proverbial dark ages.
Today’s average hire will cost a company $4k and 52 days of their time. And it’s risky, too. Even after all that time and money is spent, 20% of new hires will leave their employer in the first six months.
But, there’s a reason this industry has shied away from ‘rushing things’. People are a company’s most important asset. How do you shorten the hiring cycle and ensure you are finding the best people to build on your company’s strengths and fill your open roles?
Is it even possible to shorten your hiring cycle with all the work that goes into posting jobs, reviewing resumes, interviewing candidates, and then handling the administrative workload to make them part of the team?
It could be — instead of hiring your next team member, you could subscribe to them.
How Subscription Staffing Can Shorten Your Hiring Cycle to 3 Days
If taking just 3 days to find an incredibly talented person for your team who has 10-15+ years of experience and is Fortune-500 trained sounds too good to be true, let me explain how subscriptions staffing works.
- Company HR Manager or business owner gets in touch with Boldly to tell us what type of role they are trying to fill, the kind of candidate they are looking for, and exactly how many hours a month they need that role (yes this can be fractional).
- Boldly matches the company with a W2 employee from their team who has at least 10 years of experience in that role.
- The company and team members meet to agree to the match.
- The company pays a simple monthly subscription to utilize the talent long-term and escape the hassles of recruitment and hiring all together
Of course, remote staffing in and of itself is nothing new. For years, companies have been using fractional solutions to fill key roles, scale efficiently, and stay lean. However, there have always been major issues with the available options for remote staffing in the past.
Let’s take a look at how subscription staffing’s ‘people as a service’ model helps solve those issues.
Compliance
Arguably the biggest problem most remote staffing solutions face is the issue of compliance. In fact, it’s estimated that 3.4 million employees are currently classified as independent contractors when companies should be reporting them as employees. And this is no small mistake — misclassification can lead to dire consequences for businesses, including heavy fines, penalties, lawsuits, and even jail time.
But remaining compliant with today’s remote staffing solutions is tricky. In order to use independent contractors have to essentially give up any control of your team member in order to be within the boundaries of the law, including:
- Behavioral Control of the staff member – the when, where, and how your remote team member will work
- Financial control of the staff member – you cannot be solely or even largely responsible for the remote team member’s financial stability
- Relationship between the staff and business – Your remote team member cannot work with you for the long-term, and should only be used for short-term one-off projects, and they cannot fill anything that could be defined as a ‘key role’ for your business.
Subscription staffing solves the issue of compliance not by acting as an intermediary for contractors, or by being an employer of record ‘on paper’ only—but rather by actually recruiting, employing, managing, and retaining talent as its own integral W2 employees and then making them available on assignment on a fractional basis. The additional benefit for companies considering employing remote staff in other states is that unlike direct employment or using a PEO, the subscription staffing model removes the requirement for businesses to register to do business in those states.
Retaining Talent
Another issue faced by companies that want to utilize remote talent is the dilemma of retention. On the one hand, if you use a remote contractor for your open role, you are not compliant if you plan to use that person for a long period of time, and if you integrate them into your company culture you may as well tattoo “misclassified employee” on their forehead. On the other hand, when you bring someone on, train them on your business and objectives, and learn to work with them, you want to retain them in order to protect your investment. It’s a double-edged sword.
Subscription staffing solves this issue. As a fullW2 employee of Boldly, each person is an integral member of our team and part of our thriving remote culture. We go to great lengths to ensure that our team of remote executive assistants is happy and that they are retained for the long term so you can also enjoy working with them for the long-term.
Guaranteed Level of Talent
Finding remote talent with the background, industry experience, level of skill, and availability you need on your own can be as if not more difficult and time-consuming as recruiting and hiring an in-house employee.
With subscription staffing, the front-end work of recruiting, screening, and finding the best talent has already been done., You just need to subscribe to it.
As an example, Boldly, who pioneered the subscription staffing movement, guarantees that all of their team members have at least 7-10 years of professional experience in their field of expertise. Many of those team members have 15+ years and experience working as executive assistants with Fortune 500 companies and executives.
And there’s an obvious reason why this level of talent is flocking to roles with subscription staffing companies like Boldly. With the advent of the gig economy in recent years, employees in all sectors were at first attracted to the flexibility and diversity of work that could be done remotely.
But the gig-economy proved to have some issues, with workers being left without protection and stability.
For those looking for the flexibility of remote work but the security of traditional employment, especially those who needed location independence and for whom the 9-to-5 office job does not serve well (mothers, caregivers, military spouses, etc.) subscription staffing is the answer to having the ability to use their talent and build a rewarding and flexible career.
And for many others, it is an attractive idea to have a career with built-in continual learning and contributing to a variety of different companies they are interested in.
Subscription staffing, allows these rockstar workers to work remotely with the comfort, security, stability, and benefits of a W2 position.
So What Does the Vetting Process Look Like in a 3-Day Hiring Cycle?
Perhaps you are thinking that if you want to shorten your hiring cycle it will require making some sacrifices in quality. Again, subscription staffing proves that to be false.
With subscription staffing, a team of already highly-vetted professionals is already in place before you even contact the subscription staffing company. Therefore, unlike many remote staffing companies, subscription staffing companies don’t need to go through thousands of online profiles or use an algorithm to find you a match.
Instead, subscription staffing relies on a highly-personalized relationship with their team. For example, at Boldly, not only do we know our team’s professional backgrounds and industries, but we know their soft skills, their personality, their strengths, their likes and dislikes and whether or not they’d be not only a good fit for a certain role but whether they’ll fit into a certain culture.
We find this level of personal matching is the secret to success for adding a long-term remote team member to your team. You can’t substitute the personal and incredibly human touch required to run a ‘people’ business.
This is how subscription staffing shortens the hiring cycle. By having an already highly-experienced team in place who is fully ‘known,’ Boldly can match you on both a personal and a professional level.
How Are Other Companies Using Subscription Staff?
Right now, companies are utilizing subscription staffing to fill roles in executive assistance, marketing, project management, bookkeeping, and paralegal. Though, because of its relative newness, we wouldn’t be surprised to see subscription staffing continue to expand to more specialist roles in the future.
Subscription staffing is utilized by executives of top companies who realize the value it brings for growth and scalability as well as efficiency and cost-savings.
Pioneers will continue to shape the answers on both sides, whether it’s companies looking for flexible and affordable ways to source great talent, or employees looking for fulfilling work on their own terms. Whatever the case may be, it seems subscription staffing may finally be the innovation human resources professionals everywhere have been waiting for.
Interested in learning more about how premium subscription staffing with Boldly can shorten your hiring cycle? Get in touch here.
Topic: Remote Staffing
