Staffing Robot - Web design and marketing services for companies in the staffing industry

Staffing Robot Gets a New Look!

There's a saying you may have heard before - "the cobblers children have no shoes." This saying could definitely be applied to us. When we launched Staffing Robot as a website design and marketing services firm for staffing companies we were overwhelmed with the amount of companies seeking out our services. We love all the companies we've had the opportunity to work with and are really proud of the work we've been doing together. But we've been doing so much work we never really took the time to do any for ourselves.

Until today!

We're completely excited to now show you the new look of Staffing Robot.

Next week we'll be launching our new brand to include a new website, mobile website, blog, social pages, portfolio site and much more!

Here are the new items we're looking forward to showing off.

New Logo:

We've always had a bit of a retro look and color palette but wanted to take this even further. We've created lots of different robots but we'll let you find them all on our site next week. 

New Website:

With our website we had 3 main goals (stop me if you've heard this one before):

• Simple
• Useful
• Creative

We think we achieved these goals. Instead of having too many options and a bunch of content to navigate through we've created only two main navigation options (About and Services) that take your through a few slides each, describing the services we offer and information about our company.

From there, we made finding the services customers are interested in super simple. We consolidated this information in one location - right under the 'How can we help?' tab found along the bottom of every page.

Finally, instead of a traditional website look we went with something more unique and creative. We built the site to work more like a presentation and it's lots of fun to swipe through on your iPad. Give it a try!

Our old corporate site was located at http://www.staffingrobotonline.com. However, starting next week you'll find our corporate site at http://www.staffingrobot.com and our blog at http://www.staffingrobot.com/blog.

New Mobile Website:

One of the best services we provide to staffing companies is mobile website design and development. So,of course we couldn't forget a mobile site for ourselves!  Our mobile site is simple to get through, optimized for smart phones and provides you with all the information you need to learn more about us or contact us.

New Blog:

Staffing Robot started as a blog so we put some extra attention into our new blog design. Starting next week you'll find our blog at http://www.staffingrobot.com/blog. Our new blog will let you easily explore categories, feature our latest blog, comment on our posts and view our social streams. Also, since we had so many people interested in advertising with us we've created some ad space to help promote your services! Want to run an ad? Contact us and let us know.

Our goal is to keep bringing you relevant news and information on the staffing industry, specifically related to design, marketing and technology so be sure to subscribe to our blog via RSS or email.

Social Sites:

We are also updating the look of our social sites next week so be sure to follow us on Twitter and Like us on Facebook to check out the new pages!

New business cards:

Note the new phone number! 866.991.1849.

T Shirts!

Oh yes! We also have T-Shirts! Everyone loves T-shirts right? If you're a Staffing Robot customer we'll be sending you one of these. If not, but you [robot head] staffing tell us and we'll let you know how to get one!

We have much more to announce related to our new brand over the next several weeks, but we'll leave it at this for now. Let us know what you think about our new look below. And, if you're ready to be our next innovate client, be the first to use our new contact form on our new site (my personal favorite part of the site).

And don't forget - starting next week, you'll find our company site at http://www.staffingrobot.com and our blog at http://www.staffingrobot.com/blog.

Professional Services Hosts Webinar Series on Preparing for TJC Healthcare Staffing Services Certification

Learn about proper preparation for success in achieving the Joint Commission Healthcare Staffing Services Certification in this free, 4-part series – “Making Joint Commission Requirements Easy” launching Aug 23rd at 2 p.m. EST. Prophecy Professional Services’ Chief Clinical Officer Christine Carrington, RN, MS, will host the free 4-part webinar series discussing proper preparation for success in achieving the coveted JCHCSS Certification.

Achieving TJC certification distinguishes organizations among the elite in the country, as they must meet the highest standards in the industry. Since the Joint Commission standards support best practices that lead to the delivery of safe, quality patient care many hospitals now require Joint Commission certification to participate in the RFP process. In addition, hospital associations and some VMS & MSP organizations are requiring agencies to be certified to participate as a subcontractor.

Carrington, having over 30 years leadership experience in the healthcare industry has a 100% success rate with leading organizations to be TJCHCSS certified. Her success ranges from large, national staffing firms to start-up agencies alike.

The focus of each webinar in the series is as follows:

• Aug. 23rd @ 2pm EST: How Ready is Your Firm?
• Sept. 27th @ 2pm EST: Understanding the Leadership Standards
• Oct. 25th @ 2pm EST: Understanding the Human Resource Standards
• Nov. 15th @ 2pm EST: Understanding the Performance Measurement & Information Management Standards

Reserve your spot for each of the webinars in this series to position your organization for success the first time around with achieving the JCHCSS Certification - a key differentiating factor needed by healthcare staffing agencies in the current competitive market.

About PPS
Prophecy Professional Services - a division of Prophecy Healthcare - was founded in response to the healthcare staffing industry’s need for consultants experienced in Joint Commission’s Health Care Staffing Services Certification. PPS’ consulting services assist healthcare staffing firms prepare for Joint Commission certification and provide cost effective clinical operation and risk management services. PPS consultants are nationally experienced Nurse Executives with 25+ years of healthcare staffing experience and extensive experience and success with Joint Commission Health Care Staffing Services Certification.

Visit http://prophecyhealth.com/professional-services for additional information.

 

How Staffing Agencies Can Reward Employees For Exceptional Customer Service

Customer service is the key to success for almost every business - especially when it comes to staffing agencies. Your employees spend hours every day talking to your customers and candidates. Their interactions can make a huge difference in your customer satisfaction and ultimately your bottom line. 

Measuring customer happiness for your staffing company is critical. However, motivating your employees to provide great customer service is also something you should should focus on. If you're like a lot of companies though, it can be difficult and time consuming to know where to get started with all of this.

Look no further! Today we are happy to announce the simplest way to instantly motivate and reward your top performing employees for providing exceptional customer service. Introduction Kudos - a new feature in Hively!

What are Kudos?

Kudos are a simple way for employees to give each other feedback or for managers to reward employees. Think of it like a ‘thanks’ or a ‘pat on the back.’ 

Just like with Hively customer feedback, if you receive a Kudo you will be instantly notified and have the Hively Kudos badge prominently displayed on your leaderboard profile for your team to see. You will also receive +1 count for each Kudo you receive. Kudos are separated from customer feedback and don’t effect your customer happiness scores.

But we didn’t stop there!

What’s better than getting a Kudo? Getting a Kudo with a gift card reward! We recently partnered with Tango Card to enable our customers to provide real time rewards to top performing employees. Tango Card provides virtual gift cards that can be redeemed for cash or other gift cards like Amazon, Starbucks, Nike and Zappos. If you’re a Hively team member, simply sign up with Tango Card and you can start adding gift cards to any Kudos you send your team members.

To learn more about the other great features we released in Hively today check out the full announcement here and let your staffing company get started with rewarding your employees! Sign up for Hively. It's free to try!

 

Crowdfunding Healthcare Startups: MedStartr

New healthcare ideas can be hard to get started. Mostly because of the time and cost associated with creating new devices or getting through regulations.

However, one company is trying to change all of that.

Crowdfunding has been very successful in the tech and creative industries. Perhaps the most successful platform being Kickstarter. Now, a new company called MedStartr is bringing a similar concept to healthcare. They have a slightly different take on their crowdfunding efforts to address the unique requirements of healthcare.

In their own words:

It’s the only crowdfunding platform designed specifically for healthcare where doctors, patients, hospitals, pharma, and payers are all important backers of innovation. Previously, hospitals, doctors and patients never had an effective way to do this.

If you have a healthcare related idea but don't have the capital to get it off the ground just yet, check out MedStartr. It could make your idea a reality.

 

Bullhorn Acquired by Vista Equity Partners

Having been a dominant part of the staffing industry for years, today, recruiting softare giant Bullhorn announced they have been acquired by Vista Equity Partners for hundreds of millions of dollars.

The company, which powers and manages recruiting and staffing operations for a range of businesses, from  start-ups up to the world’s largest employment brands like Kelly, offers a range of services including mobile and social recruiting, as well as other SaaS services and consulting. It also occasionally releases interesting research on the job market and how recruitment is faring on the web. Bullhorn says it handles 150,000 job orders and placements each month, with more than 100,000 staffing and recruiting professionals across 126 countries using Bullhorn. It will continue to operate as a standalone company and will continue to expand its product offerings and geographic expansion.

Read more about this on the Bullhorn website or here on TechCrunch.

New Site Launched: Advanced Medical

Kyle is a Physical Therapist. He can get a job anywhere. So can you.

 
That's the tagline we used to guide the recent project we just completed with Advanced Medical. And it's not just a tagline. Advanced Medical is a therapy only staffing agency placing traveling therapists all across the country. Their innovation, creativity and embrace of technology has produced tremendous growth for their company over the last few years and things are only going up from here.

This project had a lot of components and enabled us to experiment with some techniques and technologies, thanks to Advanced Medical allowing us the space to be creative and trusting us to deliver.

Updated Brand
We fist updated the Advanced Medical brand. We didn't do a complete rebrand, just changed up some of the styles to give it a cleaner, more modern look. We also presented the brand in additional styles so it could used more universally.

Website
We had several primary goals with Advanced Medical's new site:

• Simply the site while presenting the same/similar information
• Not loose any SEO they've earned over the years
• Create more interaction and engagement

We started with the home page. We cleared most things out of the way so potential candidates could focus on the main thing they're looking for - JOBs! However, if these candidates are looking for more information they can get it quickly with just a click.

 

We then created a custom travel therapy job board and improved the work flow for their candidates. The job board is easy to navigate and presents job options quickly and simply.

We also present Hot Jobs throughout the site that are relevant to the modality or state mentioned on the page.



Advanced Medical does a lot of work with new grads so we made their Therapy New Grad section a primary focus of the site.

Finally, knowing Advanced Medical has a huge focus on customer happiness, so we made it easy for their customers to request travel therapy staff and also intro them to some of the friendly faces they'll be working with at Advanced Medical.

Other highlights of the website include:

• Chat Widget
• Stylized contact forms
• Modal pop up windows
• Job detail pages
• Facebook comments on the blog

Advanced SEO
- What advanced SEO you ask? Well…it's are a secret. But it's awesome. We promise. :-)

Mobile Website
And finally our favorite part of the project. The mobile website! Did we mention we love building mobile websites for staffing companies? No, well, we do. Love. Building. Mobile. Websites!

With this mobile website we used JQTouch. Sweet! JQTouch is an excellent mobile platform that brings the power and interaction of jQuerry to the mobile web. This is the first time we experimented with the platform and we were quite pleased with the results!

The jobs on the mobile website are front and center and we made it easy for potential candidates to find the right job for them by simply selecting the appropriate modality.

Candidates can easily apply for jobs, call Advanced Medical or share any job they want right from their mobile device! Nothing to install and works on every mobile smart phone. FTW!

Check out the new Advanced Medical website and mobile website and let us know what you think! Also watch for more to come with the projects we have coming out with Advanced Medical. Stay tuned!

We are extremely grateful to have the opportunity to work with Advanced Medical. We consistently put out the call asking for customers looking to be innovative with their technology and marketing efforts. Advanced Medical answered.

So now we'll ask again. Innovative customers wanted: Who's next?

 

QR Code Patient Safety Campaign

A few weeks ago we blogged about creative QR Code marketing tips your staffing company can use. Here is a great example of an innovative and creative way one group is using QR Codes to improve patient safety issues.

It's called the 2012 SAFE CARE Patient Safety Education Program. It's free and for use at any hospital. It has been brought together by Safe Care Campaign, Kimberly-Clark, The Joint Commission Speak Up™ Campaign, The Patient Channel and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The program provides a free poster to any hospital or medical center and contains QR Code links to common patient safety information. The QR Codes enable patients to consume the information through any mobile device. The posters can also be customized specific to your organization for a nominal fee.

You can learn more and download the QR Code Patient Safety Poster here.

 

Hively Upgrade: The 'WOW' Release

We're very excited to reveal the new version of Hively we have titled the 'WOW' Release. This release was almost completely based on customer feedback (thank you so much!). Read on to learn about all the improvements and new features now available in Hively.

First, the 'WOW'

What's a WOW? You know those times you go the extra mile for a customer? Well now they can let you know. Hively has always let your customers indicate if they are Happy, Satisfied or Unhappy. However, now they can also let you know when you have WOW'd them! If you go above and beyond for a customer they can give you a WOW and provide specific reasons for how you WOW'd them.

As with all Hively customer feedback, if you receive a WOW you will be instantly notified and have the Hively WOW badge prominently displayed on your leaderboard profile for your team to see. You will also receive +1 point for a WOW, increasing your personal and team customer satisfaction score! So get out there and start WOWing your customers!

Call-to-Action Buttons

Now, in addition to thanking a customer for leaving you feedback, you can create custom call-to-action buttons. For each button you can choose a label and provide a link (URL) the button will direct to. For example, you could create a button leading customers to a landing page, YouTube video, survey or to send you an email. You can create a different set of call-to-action buttons based on the type of rating the customer leaves you (Happy, Satisfied, Unhappy).

Custom Messages and Redesigned Customer Rating Page. Hively now enables you to customize the message a customer sees once they provide you with a rating. Each message can be customized based on the rating the customer provides.

We've also improved the speed and workflow of the customer rating page to better encourage customers to leave comments, and you now have the option of deciding if customers can you leave you anonymous feedback. This page is also fully optimized for smart phones!

 

Improved Application Integrations with Salesforce.com, Zendesk and Desk

You can now get custom URLs and rating snippets to integrate more seamlessly with your Salesforce.com, Zendeks and Desk.com accounts. This way, your custom email templates in these accounts can identify individual team members in Hively that ratings get sent to. There are more applications we will be adding soon. If there's a specific application you'd like us to add just let us know!

Thanks to all the customers that provided us with feedback to help make this release. There are many other updates inside of Hively as well but we'll let you have some fun discovering them instead of listing them all out here. Let us know what you think of the new improvements to Hively. As always, if you would like to send us feedback or give us your feature ideas we're always ready to listen.    

How is your staffing company measuring customer feedback? Learn more about Hively.

 

It Gives Me The Feeling Of Love

This is pretty cool. Give it a look.

Five Reasons Why Staffing Providers Should (And Do) Embrace Technology-Driven Vendor Management (Part 1 of 2)

Guest Blog by Jeff Niles - Vice President of Sales and Marketing at ShiftWise – A leading provider of hospital workforce management software and services in the healthcare staffing industry. This post orginally appeared on the ShiftWise blog ShiftWise Exchange.

For the better part of the past decade, I have been in and around technology-driven vendor management in health care. In that time, I have experienced or witnessed every possible human emotion that is associated with VMS programs both good and bad.

As a young staffing Account Executive, I vividly remember the fear and panic I felt when I first heard that one of my bigger clients was going to a VMS.  Certain that this nameless, faceless software application was going to “ruin my relationship” with the client, I prepared a self-serving list of reasons why this was a bad idea for the client.  Despite my greatest efforts and deepest convictions that I knew best for the client, in the end, there was nothing I could do. I was doomed.

Or so I thought. My client’s change actually improved our relationship and helped us grow revenue in that account.  In retrospect, my reaction was based on fear, lack of information, and a sense that change is always bad.

Over time, my epiphany has been shared by a growing number of staffing providers. I see more and more firms making statements like, “We like it when we hear that a client is moving to ShiftWise” and “We wish that all of our clients used a system like ShiftWise.”

But still, skeptics remain. So what is it that makes one staffing provider benefit from VMS technology and another miss an opportunity? In the spirit of sharing and collaboration, I have condensed the attitudes of the embracers I spoke with to help you decide.

The Top 5 Reasons why staffing providers should embrace technology driven Vendor Management.

Warning! Embracing VMS technology for your staffing office may result in an overwhelming urge to hug your computer.

1. It will improve your relationships with your clients.

Impossible, right?  How can having to use my computer to tell my client that Suzy Q can work this afternoon improve my relationship?  Where’s the personal connection and the reassurance that I’m there for them?

Ok, it’s time for a couple doses of reality.

1. Rarely do VMS programs (ShiftWise certainly doesn’t) have a policy where you may NEVER SPEAK TO THE CLIENT.
2. Nobody wants to talk to the same person five times per day to answer questions like “Do you need anyone for tonight?”

Staffing providers that embrace VMS understand that a relationship isn’t built out of a series of short conversations about mundane staffing related nuances. Rather, relationships are built by:

• Delivering high quality candidates precisely when they are needed.
• Doing the extra work to complete online profiles with supporting documents so that managers can more easily qualify candidates.

The president of a provider of Locum Tenens I spoke with said it best:

“We want our clients to see our candidates matching to an order and say, ‘This vendor is reliable and never wastes my time, I’m choosing their staff first.’  If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job.”

2. You will fill more positions than ever before in the same account.

There’s a little secret that staffing office folks have kept from staffing providers since the very first agency nurse filled the very first open shift. It goes something like this:

If I convince every vendor I work with that they are my favorite, and that I call them first whenever I have any needs, I will get more staff from all of my vendors when I’m in a pinch.

I can’t tell you how many times I have met with staffing agencies who insist that they are without a doubt the “first call,” #1 vendor at a hospital, all while I’m staring at a client-produced spreadsheet that shows this vendor hovering somewhere around 7th. Convinced that they fill all the shifts already they focus efforts elsewhere and miss growth opportunities.

A VMS allows you to see all of the orders that are open, pending, filled and cancelled across the entire organization regardless of whether you are able to actually reach someone on the phone. In addition, a VMS allows you to staff more people within the same account with the same or fewer resources.

This quote from a Branch Manager of a Per Diem staffing provider summarized it for me:

“I used to have two coordinators staffing the same hospital.One was responsible for gathering availability from staff and the other was to hunt for needs at the account.  Now I have one person on that account and we have three times as many hours there as we did prior to VMS.”

 

About Jeff Niles

Jeff is the current Vice President of Sales and Marketing for ShiftWise and is based in Chicago, IL. He joined ShiftWise in 2006 as a Regional Sales Director bringing over a decade of experience in health care recruitment and workforce management. An early promoter of technology driven contingent workforce management, Jeff has developed and delivered several high impact and innovative healthcare staffing solutions to forward thinking healthcare organizations nationwide. Jeff holds a BA from Miami University and earned an MA from the University of Cincinnati. He is also an active member of ASHHRA, SHRM, CHEF and CAHR.