[ITW] Delphine Labail, Director of Customer Relations at Troops, the digital platform for temporary employment agencies

The temporary employment sector has not escaped the turbulence of the coronavirus health crisis in France and around the world.

While a number of 100% digital temporary employment agencies (i.e. no physical branches) were already well equipped to ensure the continuity of their relationship with client companies and temporary workers, other players were not. relationships with client companies and temporary workers, other more traditional players saw their activities severely impacted, particularly during the initial containment period.

Temporary employment agencies had to be responsive and ingenious in order to rapidly deploy digital solutions and tools and maintain their market share. Delphine Labail, Customer Relations Director at Troops, takes a look back at 2020 and forecasts for the future.

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What is your assessment of 2020 in terms of the digitalisation of the temporary employment sector?

Like the rest of the economic world, the temporary employment sector has obviously seen many changes as a result of the covid-19 health crisis. The events and political decisions that punctuated the year naturally had an economic impact on many temporary employment agencies.

In France, temporary work contracted by 23.6% in 2020. This corresponds to the loss of almost 185,000 full-time equivalent temporary ^jobs1.

These figures - which may seem alarming at first sight - are not linked to the dynamism of the sector as such. In my opinion, the two main causes of the slowdown in temporary work activities are :

• The logical repercussion of the standstill in certain sectors of activity, which have had to freeze all recruitment. This is particularly true of the catering, hotel, tourism and events sectors.
  
  
• The sudden interruption of work for certain temporary employment agencies that were not sufficiently well equipped to allow their employees to carry out their duties remotely, by teleworking.

This second point has had a major impact on the relationship between candidates and the company. With the closure of the agencies, we had to find ways of communicating with the temporary workers and ensuring the continuity of the administrative services. As a result, the way we work had no choice but to evolve rapidly. In this case, we have seen a significant increase in the number of remote interviews.

What's more, for some players, opportunities have emerged from this crisis. Going digital has enabled them to gain market share without necessarily needing to extend the opening hours of their physical branches. They have opted for what is known as a " phygital " model, in other words, one that skilfully takes advantage of the complementary nature of physical networks and the improvements in productivity brought about by digital technology.

Finally, and quite logically, demand for temporary staff in the retail and healthcare sectors has exploded.

Do you think that the changes observed during the health crisis will continue?

As far as the digitalisation of the sector is concerned, yes, unquestionably! The sector had already been moving in this direction for some years, but the crisis has accelerated the trend. Digital technology is boosting the image of temporary employment agencies.

With 35% of temporary workers under the age of 25 and 28% between the ages of 25 and ³⁴²it goes without saying that digital is no longer an option. Otherwise, temporary employment agencies run the risk of completely missing out on this target group of young candidates for whom digital technology is part of everyday life.

Going digital means not only being more in tune with the expectations of temporary workers, but also with those of our customers, the user companies. In today's calls for tender, digital technology is almost systematically mandatory. Customers want 24/7 access to information, flawless responsiveness and maximum personalisation of service. Without digital, it is impossible to meet these challenges.

The great strength of digitising temporary employment agencies is that it not only responds to the constraints imposed by the market, but also reduces the costs traditionally associated with managing administrative tasks.

All these factors combined explain why, in 2021, digitalisation will continue and accelerate.

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What are the advantages of a digital platform for temporary employment agencies?

Today, all temporary employment agencies have begun their digital transformation. This transformation has been greatly accelerated by the emergence of the online temping market we mentioned earlier.

However, despite the apparent revolution brought about by these new entrants, "we are still a long way from a platform model where all transactions take place online.grity of transactions take place online, with no human support to carry them ^out3 " points out Kaelig Sadaune, Managing Director of Randstad Direct. So it's not a threat that the traditional temporary employment groups should see in the digitalisation of the sector, but a real opportunity to boost their productivity.

The advantage of using an all-in-one digital platform when you have a physical network is first and foremost to put an end to the piecemeal use of software and tools that are not interconnected. Centralising information and having access to real-time updates significantly reduces the risk of errors and naturally increases the speed with which tasks can be carried out. This is what a SaaS platform like Troops, with which many third-party solutions can be synchronised (ATS, job boards, invoicing and payroll software, etc.), can do in particular.

By automating as many administrative tasks as possible, the digitisation of temporary work groups puts people back at the heart of the agency-client-temporary relationship. Agency staff can do away with time-consuming tasks such as issuing DPAEs, signing contracts and sending out automatic reminders, and focus instead on higher value-added assignments.

Troops-type software also offers a major improvement in data collection and the monitoring of key performance indicators, with intelligent dashboards.

Finally, deploying a digital solution for a network of agencies is an ideal opportunity to refresh its image with temporary workers and offer a competitive customer experience to user companies. All in all, it strengthens the employer brand of the network in question.

Sources