It is great to see so many new security start ups joining us! It seems that many areas of staffing have been on slow or stop during the pandemic and very capable experienced mangers have been putting their plans in place for their own business.
Challenges are numerous but none are really difficult. It is more about juggling lots of balls. Here are some of the ones we have found in the last three months.
- Finding clients: simple because you have probably been managing them for some time now.
- Finding staff: this appears to be easier than the news stories suggest. It is true that many professionals have left industries like door supervision, experiential and catering/hospitality. However, there are plenty left and many joining.
- Cashflow: As a start up, you need to pay staff on time (or lose them) This and other overheads and start up costs means you need to collect the payments from clients as soon as possible. Set against that, you can run with very low overheads as a start up.
- Systems: must be off the shelf and ready to go and with customisability and a reactive (preferably proactive) supplier with lots of experience and ideas. They must help your business – not tell you how their system should be used. Also, be aware that specialist suppliers to the staffing agencies have had a tough time and many have balance sheets well underwater. Check any prospective supplier’s financials thoroughly. You are betting your business on your SaaS supplier.
- Contractual agreements: You need to have these in place for customers and staff. It may be the first time you have ever written a “heads of agreement”. However, it will pay you back in spades if you have a dispute.
- Compliance: you will be required by law as a business owner to comply with health and safety, rights to work, privacy law and many other pillars of an advanced jurisdiction. Added to that, your clients will be asking about cyber security, modern slavery, anti- bribery and other matters where they have commitments to check their supply chain i.e. your company.
- Other: added to that, there are all the small items that each take up your bandwidth. These include office space an equipment, uniforms, logo design, website and social media content and so many other things all of which are essential to judge and prioritise.
- Planning: just deciding what you will do now (e.g. uniforms) and what will come later (offices) takes your time and attention. Working on the business as opposed to in the business”
Although we end up discussing all these issues with our clients and hopefully come up with some helpful ideas occasionally, we really specialise in getting systems in place to make your organisation more efficient from day one. We can help with all your cloud needs including staffing system and website and email set up and support. AXLR8 have templates and checklists for every area. These functions can be added one at a time according to your priorities or all together if you need to do that.
- Applicant Tracking
- Vetting and Compliance
- Rights to work
- Contracts
- Job Posting and jobs board website
- links to candidate streams from Indeed, Monster and many others
- Client CRM and mailings
- Staff app
- Booking system
- Time and attendance, CICO (Check in and Check out and continuous monitoring)
- Lone worker safety
- Payroll (S/E and PAYE)
- Invoicing
- Management information
- Information collection
- Staff communications through multiple channels (email, chat, texts, etc.)
- and much more
Give us a call to discuss our new start-up packages