Front office transformation: Moving towards phygital offices

Gearing up for growth

After a tumultuous period, staffing firms are gearing up for sustained growth driven by the upturn in economic activity and a strong labor market.

For the first time in over a decade, candidate acquisition takes precedence over other business goals and priorities, including winning new clients. Furthermore, GRID’s annual talent survey reports that 67% of the participants see value in recruitment firms. Candidates feel that recruitment agencies, in addition to assisting them find better opportunities, help save time and are easy to work with during the job search process.

The staffing and recruitment industry and its participants are primed for a change. Today, consumers are blessed with a wide array of intuitive, personalized, and easily accessible services that meet their needs. The new generation of candidates expects a similar experience from recruitment firms across all touchpoints. Whether they are looking for jobs through a mobile app, a portal, or by visiting a nearby branch, the candidate experience needs to be consistent and immersive. Hence, as part of their digital transformation journey, recruitment firms are adopting new technology solutions to maximize this growth opportunity and deliver next-generation experiences for clients and candidates.

The future of front offices is ‘phygital’

For recruitment firms, branch offices have been an integral part of their operations and are an important touchpoint for candidate and client interactions.

The industry has seen a trend of acquisition and consolidation in which major recruitment firms have acquired smaller ones and, as a result, have a network of front offices across the globe.

In the last two years, an increasing number of people have adopted digital experiences on account of restrictions placed on movement and travel. Front offices are no exception to this. Recruitment firms have reported a decline in candidate footfalls in most of their front offices. This has led to discussions around the future of front offices and whether they are required in the post-pandemic world. 

Having said that, the GRID Annual Talent survey reported that candidates do not want everything to be done over an app or through a digital medium. They still value the personal touch and human connect during the job search process. This is an important insight that contributes to the future of front offices. 

We believe that recruitment firms need to perform a balancing act when it comes to front offices. On the one hand, digital experiences are the way forward owing to the ease of deployment and scalability. On the other hand, front offices will still serve as an important touch point offering human connect and assistance to candidates.  

There is a need for recruitment firms to bring these two aspects together to create strategic futuristic front offices that bring together the best of digital experiences while providing human connect to create an ideal touch point. 

Creating the front office of the future

For recruitment firms, a move towards phygital front offices is a journey that will involve the creation of strong digital foundations and extending them to strategic front offices.

This exercise also presents an opportunity for recruitment firms to identify the front offices that need to continue operating physically and those that can benefit from shifting completely to a digital-only presence. Following initiatives can help recruitment firms create front offices of the future.

• Omnipresent digital platform – To enable an exceptional experience for employees, clients, and candidates, there is a need for an omnipresent digital platform that interacts and orchestrates with the application landscape to provide a seamless way of performing various tasks across the recruitment process. From receiving client requirements and finding the right candidates to onboarding and engaging with them, an all-in-one solution for recruitment firms will bring together state-of-the-art offerings that provide a digital foundation and accelerate the transformation journey.
  
• Strategic branch identification – There is a need for a consulting exercise that brings together organizational insights and data analytics to assess branches across various volumetric (walk-ins, footfalls, number of clients, and candidates served), demographic (average income, access to public transportation, availability of high-speed internet), and experience (candidate and customer CSS, importance to a client) parameters to help recruitment firms identify strategic branches which can be ideal candidates for digital transformation. This exercise helps identify branches that can benefit from going completely digital, thereby resulting in financial and operational savings for recruitment firms. It also helps meet the sustainability goals of recruitment firms by reducing the carbon footprint of multiple branches.
  
• Pop-up front offices – Recruitment firms can leverage their digital foundations and the omnipresent digital platform to create pop-up front offices at trade fairs, job fairs, and client locations. A pop-up branch can be set up relatively quickly and provides prospective candidates and clients the experience of a full-fledged front office without ever stepping into one. Candidates can use it to fill out timesheets, raise queries and concerns, and search for new roles. 
  
• Front offices in the metaverse – As the idea of an immersive experience becomes synonymous with extended reality, recruitment firms can also explore the idea of creating a front office in the metaverse. Such experiences can ease accessibility to front offices, provide a space to host virtual job fairs, and pave the way for a completely online front office.
  

The following diagram displays the various initiatives required to create a futuristic front office and a high-level order that a recruitment firm can follow to deliver successful outcomes.