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This year more than 2,100 industry professionals worldwide weighed in on our annual staffing trends report with their top priorities, challenges, and opportunities for 2021. Throughout the year, we’ll break down responses from some noteworthy groups within the industry. Today, we’re covering the top staffing trends for Enterprise staffing firms in 2021.
Discover Top Staffing and Recruiting Trends for 2021 at the GRID
Revenue Outlook
Respondents are largely optimistic about their performance expectations for 2021, perhaps as a result of their strong finish to 2020. Sixty-nine percent of large firms expect revenue to increase in 2021 and one-sixth of respondents expect revenue to increase by more than 25 percent.
This is just slightly less optimistic than their smaller counterparts: seventy-one percent of all respondents expect revenue to increase in 2021, and one-fifth of all respondents expect revenue to increase by more than 25 percent.
Top Priorities for Enterprise Staffing Firms in 2021
While the industry underwent a lot of change in 2020, the top three priorities for staffing and recruitment businesses remain the same for 2021: it’s all about candidates and clients.
- 48% Candidate acquisition/sourcing
- 40% Winning new clients
- 34% Engaging candidates
- 22% Redeploying previously placed candidates
- 16% Improving management of client relationships
Candidate Acquisition (48%)
Candidate acquisition is again the top priority for staffing firms in 2021. This is perhaps related to the continued existence of the talent shortage, but large staffing firms are less likely to report a shortage of qualified talents than their smaller peers. Forty-nine percent of Enterprise firms say there’s still a shortage, compared to 55 percent of all respondents.
Winning New Clients (40%)
Respondents who reported a down year in 2020 were 1.5 times more likely to prioritize winning new business over their counterparts who reported an increase in revenue.
Candidate Engagement (34%)
Notably, firms are markedly more interested in placing candidates than they are in engaging with them. Given the importance of candidate experience to redeployment, perhaps it’s no surprise that large firms are the most likely to prioritize candidate experience and redeployment.
How Do Large Staffing Firms Differ?
While the top three priorities are the same for firms of all sizes, large firms were less likely to prioritize candidate acquisition and winning new clients than their smaller counterparts and were more likely to prioritize candidate engagement.
The biggest difference between Enterprise strategy and everyone else? Large firms are 69 percent more likely to prioritize redeploying candidates than their smaller counterparts and 41 percent less likely to focus on marketing.
This reflects a theme to the approach for larger firms in 2021: efficiency. Large firms emphasized maximizing efficiency in every area of the business, from automating more processes to redeploying more of their existing candidate database. In contrast, smaller firms emphasized the need to rebuild client bases and win over candidates.
Top Recruiting Challenges for Large Firms in 2021
Respondents were asked to pick their top challenges for the year ahead. COVID-19 looms large, impacting many of the challenges facing staffing and recruitment agencies in 2021.
- 67% COVID-19 related impacts on the labor market
- 33% Talent shortage
- 28% Hiring freezes
- COVID-19 related impacts on the labor market (67%)
- The direct and indirect impact of COVID-19 looms large for large staffing firms in 2021. Respondents cite hiring freezes and an increased challenge in building candidate relationships as particular obstacles caused or exacerbated by COVID-19.
- Tight talent pools/skills shortage (33%)
- Staffing firms of all sizes cite a talent shortage as a major challenge, but large firms are 25% less likely to cite it as a top challenge.
- Hiring freezes (26%)
- Respondents also reported hiring freezes as the top obstacle preventing them from winning new business (33%).
Interested in learning more about the staffing trends, challenges, opportunities, and ideas that will shape the staffing industry in the year ahead? There’s so much more waiting for you at the Global Recruitment Insights and Data site, like key findings broken down by region and resources designed to help you be a trendsetter like free PowerPoint slides.
