Trends to expect in the staffing industry for the year 2021

With the global uncertainty rising, new normalcy gaining momentum, unemployment rates spiking, the 2021 staffing market doesn’t seem to get better anytime soon. However, according to U.S Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, the unemployment rate is believed to drop below 5% in 2021 due to the government’s relief packages and COVID-19 vaccination efforts, and things are expected to take a turn for the better.

This healing economy will bring furloughed workers back to work and demand the staffing managers to source permanent, locum, and hourly-based talent for the end clients. To prep for the evolving staffing market in the new normal, it is pivotal to analyze and evaluate the key trends that will be potentially reshaping the staffing industry in 2021.

Next-generation Automation:

Considering the growing digital transformation trend across various industries, staffing firms have already begun incorporating digital solutions across the business’s  primary areas. However, the modern workplace and the new normal demands the growing staffing agencies to up their digitalization game by automating their digital process. This creates a wholly integrated engagement engine in the sphere of staffing that is fuelled by automation.

According to an online survey by Statista Research Department- Impact of automation on the North American staffing industry, 38% of the staffing firm employees believed that automation implementation could create more jobs.

The next generation of workers prefers a candidate experience that is beyond the emails and SMS and demands a polished as well as a cohesive experience. To ensure the same, staffing companies will be focusing more on implementing recruiting chatbots to efficiently collect data and screen candidates with a more personalized conversation.

Data-driven Staffing:

Another trend that can be foreseen is data-driven staffing. With an increased pressure to hire the right candidate, staffing companies are increasingly resorting to data, further helping them make smart hiring decisions. With the help of predictive analytics, the traditional hiring procedure is soon to get upgraded with the data-driven staffing process that heavily focuses on statistical techniques like predictive modeling, data mining, and machine learning to evaluate better the candidate based on the current as well as historical data and make confident predictions regarding the future.

Remote Work:

No better year than 2020 to have taught us everything about remote work or work from home. With video calls taking over weekly meetings, staffing companies have shifted and adapted remote culture over face-to-face hiring, interviewing, and onboarding.

With pandemic having necessitated the technology to bridge the gap across the geographies, 91% of the staffing companies have been seen adopting video conferencing and video interviewing solutions!  

This increasing remote working and practices to make it successful at both the end is evidence to the fact that remote working is the future and staffing companies will be required to have the right policies to cater to such staffing requirements.

Project-based hiring:

It’s not only remote working that has been the new way of working. The unprecedented times have expected the businesses to restructure their work policies and switch to project-based hiring for better operational cost saving. 

The market is completely volatile and is expected to stay the same for at least half of the year 2021. Hence, until the businesses across various industries start making decent profits and can afford a full-time staff, the talent on contract or project-basis would be in demand. This also promises to offer increased opportunities to domain experts taking projects on a short-term basis and establishing a better work-life balance. 

The unprecedented times have undoubtedly been difficult for businesses causing the staffing industry to take an upside turn. However, the second half of 2020 has paved the way for a brighter and digital and data-driven future that 2021 intends to embrace as well.