The dynamic nature of the business world requires companies to be responsive and appropriately address spikes in productivity due to anticipated escalations in temporary workforce or large enterprise initiatives. During these periods, companies encounter an influx of temporary staffing needs that require an agile and flexible workforce. Unfortunately, the actual process of quickly finding, screening, hiring, onboarding, and managing a large volume of high quality candidates is at risk of falling apart without the assistance of a dedicated staffing partner. Through a collaborative effort, businesses working with the right partner will not only get a strategic thinker that understands their business objectives, but a company that has the expertise and best practices in place to overcome the obstacles of size, speed, and scale.

Timeframes alone threaten to make program based hiring difficult and expensive. The average time-to-hire has gone up nationwide for finding and on-boarding talent. Finding individual candidates for healthcare takes 29 days on average and 33 days for customer service with other industries experiencing comparable timeframes. Companies that want to quickly augment their workforce need support from trained professionals who understand the processes involved in large project based staffing efforts.

w3r Consulting is well-versed in providing organizations across healthcare, finance, insurance, and numerous other industries with workforce solutions. w3r’s Talent Solutions Team is prepared to overcome our customers’ most pressing challenges by handling the search, screening, onboarding, and management process required by large project based staffing initiatives. w3r builds partnerships in advance of the program need to ensure that, from start to finish, project objectives are accomplished within precise timelines. The following examples demonstrate how the project based staffing process works.

Financial Services Rollout Required High Quality Call Center Analysts Fast

Their Challenge

A financial services company was preparing to launch a new and improved customer portal that promised to enhance their overall customer experience. Due to the quantity and type of changes to the portal interface, they expected some initial customer disorientation. This disorientation would result in hundreds upon hundreds of additional calls from customers with concerns and questions about their accounts, increasing call volume well beyond capacity. An adaptable workforce needed to be ready and waiting without any loss to their service level agreement.

Hiring W2 employees would be an impractical solution once the initial call spike subsided. If they hired a contingent workforce, the financial services company needed dependable and resourceful candidates who reflected brand values in every interaction. Finding that caliber of talent required collaboration with a staffing partner that knew the client as well as they knew themselves. Without hesitation, they reached out to a long-time staffing partner: w3r Consulting.

w3r Consulting’s Process

The program based staffing team at w3r Consulting began the process by evaluating the customer’s staffing needs, roles, and the forecasted call volume requirements. A rigorous multi-level screening process was implemented to find experienced candidates who fit the client’s objectives, culture, and required skillsets for each job function. Customer contact center representatives were pulled from candidate pools with exemplary customer service skills. Customer service team leads were selected specifically for their financial sector call center experience. Overall, w3r used extensive project-based experience to ensure high employee retention and low turnover among the candidates presented.

“Consistency is crucial across these types of placements,” said Dave Reich, Vice President of Delivery and Strategic Development. “Finding a high volume of candidates with the right core skillsets, temperament, and adaptability requires a critical eye to obtain the best results. Our connection with this client made the process smooth.” w3r developed behavioral interview questions to evaluate personality traits in order to find the strongest candidates to meet the needs of the client.

This in-depth process pinpointed 50 customer contact center representatives and two team leads aligned with the client’s skills criteria and culture. The w3r Account Managers worked alongside the client’s leadership and newly hired team leads to quickly and effectively onboard and train contingent staff to assist customers with understanding new functionality, establishing new login credentials, and troubleshooting system compatibility issues.

The Account Managers remained engaged throughout the course of the project. “The w3r team acted as an extension of the client’s HR department by managing the contingent program staff,” said Dave Reich. “We worked to proactively prevent any lapse in service.” If any candidates missed a day, Account Managers replaced them with a customer contact center representative from the reserve of trained backups. As the increase in call volume came to a close, the Account Managers successfully worked with the client to offboard the contingent staff.

Their Results

The new and improved customer portal launched without a hitch. Predictions about increased call volume were accurate yet the client’s KPIs remained constant without any loss to their service level agreement. Overall, the client calculated the program to be a success with the team maintaining established service level agreement requirements throughout the engagement.

Due to the initial success of this collaboration, the client has turned to w3r Consulting to satisfy their high volume needs for three additional projects (with more on the horizon):

• Updates to their interactive voice response system that required temporary staff to assist customers in understanding the new secure login method while troubleshooting difficulties establishing new login credentials.
• A brand change from Visa to MasterCard that required temporary customer contact staff to communicate the new card benefits and troubleshoot issues customers had in establishing new PIN credentials.
• Improvements to the client’s mobile banking accessibility that called for temporary staff to assist customers develop an understanding of the new functionality and establish new SMS notifications.

Each collaboration in project based staffing has delivered multiple professional resources for the client in a way that contributed measurable results to customer interactions and maintained strong project revenue. For that very reason, the client continues to turn to w3r consulting when they need high quality, customer-facing professionals.

Healthcare Payors Handle HEDIS Timelines with a Trained RN Workforce

Their Challenge

Robust member engagement for healthcare payors is a top priority. Member engagement relies on being proactive about interactions. Complying with HEDIS measures, encouraging new members to take advantage of open enrollment, or implementing programs to comply with regulatory and benefit contract changes requires a dedicated staff at precise moments. Whether making targeted outgoing calls or offering informed counsel as call volumes increase, this temporary project-based staff needs to respond in ways that advance the payor’s brand and business objectives.

One of the healthcare payor clients required that level of experienced and flexible staff to handle HEDIS outreach efforts as their highest volume months approached. Temporary staff would need to be brought on for a brief but concentrated effort to collect, review, and extract data from members’ medical records. Staff is also used to proactively reach out to members to ensure encounters are scheduled that will result in HEDIS measures, such as required tests or physician visits.

Finding qualified personnel on short notice required the aid of a staffing partner that understood the urgency of the project, the impact of good HEDIS measures, and the client’s culture. Through previous experience, the client decided to reach out to w3r Consulting to bring their HEDIS function through a successful cycle.

w3r’s Consulting’s Process

Over the course of the project, w3r’s Account Managers worked closely with the healthcare payor to ensure that a qualified team of nursing staff, coders, and administrative professionals was available for the three to six month period of data preparation leading up to HEDIS submittal. w3r reviewed numerous candidates in the pursuit of the perfect fit. Using w3r’s understanding of the client’s program, w3r was able to identify a team that not only fit the candidate profiles but possessed strong communication and motivational interviewing skills. The Account Managers then interviewed prospects, determined the frontrunners, and made the hire for the client.

w3r Consulting’s Account Managers’ work was only beginning. w3r was heavily involved in the onboarding and orientation process, working alongside the client’s leadership and HR to train temporary staff members to identify opportunities to encourage member wellness and increase HEDIS measures. w3r’s Account Managers checked in on a weekly basis once the staff was in place, reviewing the project processes and providing support to improve team performance. This helps the w3r Consulting team lower turnover over the course of the project. And when the project finally came to a close, w3r was instrumental in the offboarding process, allowing the client to focus on a smooth return to regular workloads and operations.

Their Results

As the initial collaboration came to a close, the client was impressed with w3r’s ability to get their HEDIS function up and running. With the cyclical nature of this project, the client has turned to w3r Consulting for the last few years in preparation for all their HEDIS submittals. During each of these cycles, w3r provide 20 to 50 additional RNs, coder, and administrative resources, many of who are returning talent from the previous year.

All of that hard work and continuity has paid off. As of last year, w3r has been able to improve the client’s HEDIS measures year over year with some measures increasing up to 26%. The strength of this project based staffing partnership continues to get the high return on investment from each HEDIS submittal that keeps the client competitive in the healthcare payor space.

Want your project based staffing managed from start to finish?

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