When labor shortages threaten your company’s operations, the pressure is on to act quickly. Unfortunately, as every seasoned business leader knows, acting quickly is not always acting wisely. Based on AFIMAC’s decades of providing Critical Situation Travel Labor (CSTL) to a wide range of industries around the world, here are a few of the most common missteps that companies make when hiring travel labor, along with clear guidance for how to avoid them.
Misstep: Evaluating ROI on cost per hour instead of the cost of inaction. If your manufacturing company has a large backlog of customer orders due to a shortage of skilled labor, “making do” with your current staffing won’t do. Delaying deliveries not only hurts your bottom line in the short term; it also weakens your long-term relationships with your customers. Continuing to make this misstep time after time will leave customers looking for other manufacturers to partner with, leaving you scrambling to pick up the pieces.
Solution: Rapidly deploy skilled labor when and where your business needs it most. Choose a CSTL partner that can mobilize quickly enough to make a difference in your bottom line. AFIMAC teams can mobilize within 72 hours, and when you’ve fulfilled all those orders, our teams demobilize in 72 hours as well. This sort of efficiency is what keeps your ROI where you want it to be.
Misstep: For large deployments, expecting current managers to take on additional responsibility rather than hiring a partner for operational management.
Solution: Just because someone is a good manager doesn’t mean they’ll be an effective operational manager. Operational management is more than supervision. It’s a complex responsibility that should be considered through every aspect of your manufacturing process. Expecting your existing managers to “step up” and operationally manage a large, time-sensitive CSTL deployment may sound doable, but it actually sets your team up for failure. A more effective alternative is to find a partner whose operational managers are experienced in handling essential details from compliance paperwork to transporting teams from hotels to job sites and back to ensure punctuality. The right operational manager ensures that things run smoothly from end to end each and every day.
Misstep: Failing to plan for operational continuity in the face of a crisis. Whether you’re a food and beverage maker constantly grappling with perishability or an automotive manufacturer facing just-in-time production pressure, waiting for a crisis to address your skilled labor needs leads to lost time, lost productivity, and lost revenue.
Solution: Build a long-term relationship with a staffing partner so that when a crisis comes, you’ll have a plan and a CSTL solution in place. This way, you’ll be prepared to handle response planning and operational continuity come what may. AFIMAC offers customizable staffing plans built around your unique schedule, location, and performance goals.
