Five Challenges that Lab Staffing Partners Can Solve
From enhancing capabilities to keeping up with regulatory changes, staffing partners can help with more than just turnover
Lab managers have a tremendous amount on their plates and, often, not enough resources to accomplish it all. Here are five of the greatest challenges lab managers face and how the right staffing partner can help you meet business objectives.
1. Turnover: With employers currently facing the retirement boom and consequent employee burnout due to being short-staffed, turnover is inevitable. The loss of institutional knowledge and expertise with the departing staff makes it even more painful. Ultimately, if you’re left with more work than your lab has the bandwidth to accommodate, it’s time to get help. A recruiting partner can bring you the needed talent quickly, with far-reaching talent networks and a consistent pulse on the market.
2. Enhancing capabilities: Developing new lab services capabilities is one topic that can keep lab leaders up at night, constantly reminded of the urgency in needing to innovate. Many lab managers feel handicapped by gaps hindering their current capability. This provides another opportunity to allow your staffing partner to seek out the expertise needed to fill these gaps and make tackling that new R&D project less intimidating.
3. Regulatory changes: The one constant is that regulatory and safety requirements are constantly changing. As a lab manager, you must stay abreast of the regulatory updates impacting your business and implement the necessary changes to remain compliant and minimize risks of audit observations. This may land you in a position where you need to scale your team with minimal notice. A staffing partner can help to fill this gap quickly.
4. Project commitments: In R&D, each delay can have significant impacts on your speed to market. If you have projects falling behind, it’s worth doing a cost analysis to consider bringing in additional support. It’s in these cases where time is of the essence. A recruiting partner can help find the right people to ensure you have the needed capacity to deliver.
5. Budget: For most lab leaders, it is a constant battle trying to meet annual goals with what feels like a shrinking budget. Often, too much time and effort are spent drafting business cases with justifications that don’t suffice to gain approval to hire another full-time employee for the team. When partnering with a staffing organization, you are afforded more flexibility in how you fund their services. For instance, you can cross-charge the different functional areas within your organization that will benefit from the new hire
Labs must be run with agility. Exploring external partnerships and alternative solutions will allow you to remain nimble and obtain the resources needed to meet your business and research needs.