Reinforcing employer loyalty & engagement in the low-touch staffing industry
RGF Staffing Belgium (RGFB) is an ecosystem of brands that offers a multitude of HR and staffing solutions worldwide. By matching the right talent with the right companies, they provide ‘opportunities for life’ where both individuals and companies can reach their full potential. RGFB has over 900 consultants and freelancers on their books through brands such as USG Professionals and Bright Plus.
Staffing agencies like RGFB are the matchmakers of the professional world, pairing the right talent with the right company to meet different needs, ambitions and aspirations.
However, once successfully matched, freelancers and consultants have relatively limited contact with RGFB – an example of a low-touch industry that is becoming even more so with the global pandemic.
The company wanted to leverage digital to develop a future-proof way of strengthening that connection – providing ‘touch through tech’ – and enhancing the overall user experience of its workforce.
With more satisfied and loyal individuals on their books, RGFB would be better positioned to attract and retain top-class clients.
Working closely with RGFB, we identified the key touchpoints where an integrated digital solution would bring measurable impact and value for freelancers and consultants, e.g. timesheet submission, up-to-date availability, etc.
With RGFB’s requirements serving as a foundation, we set about analysing the company’s IT infrastructure to fully understand how to integrate the solution into the current environment and offer a seamless, real-time user experience.
The end result was an application that not only simplifies administrative tasks for users, but that also gives RGFB a means to communicate and engage with their audience in a more proactive and personalised way.
To offer an efficient and cost-effective way for RGFB’s 5 star brands and their sub-brands to benefit from powerful functionalities, we proposed to develop a core app that can easily be rebranded by applying different skins. This means that smaller brands only needed to make a limited investment to skin the app to their own brand.
of consultants downloaded the app in the first six weeks
of all users now submit their timesheets via the app
With our requirements as the foundation, November Five created a powerful yet intuitive digital solution that delivers real value to our whole ecosystem.
RGF Staffing Belgium Manager IT Demand & Delivery
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Keeping up with digital expectations has become more important than ever, with companies working hard to meet ever-evolving demands. But beyond satisfying their customers’ needs, successful companies also have to take their employees’ digital needs and expectations into consideration.
To ensure RGFB’s new digital platform would bring meaningful impact to freelancers and consultants, we needed to find out which aspects would make the biggest difference all round.
As in many companies, the admin challenges around timesheet management were a burden for everyone – for example, manually submitting timesheets and requesting holidays was time-consuming for workers, while missing data was an administrative nightmare for staff handling invoices.
By identifying and analysing the aspects that would most improve the experience and efficiency for all parties, we developed features such as one-click timesheet completion, in-app holiday requests, and simplified medical certificate submission.
Identifying the most valuable services and features for RGFB’s workforce was the first part of the challenge. But to make the company’s digital offering really stand out, we needed to ensure a seamless user experience 24/7 – especially at peak times like Friday afternoons when everyone submits their timesheets.
We first analysed RGFB’s existing IT infrastructure and processes to identify any factors that would influence the architecture of the new app.
To guarantee 100% availability, we decided to develop a serverless mobile app backend and app database that run independently of RGFB’s main internal systems, and synchronise thanks to an anti-corruption layer. This means that even when RGFB systems are offline, e.g. in maintenance mode or during the monthly closing, users have uninterrupted access to all the app’s functionalities, critical throughout these high-impact digital products.
This approach brought several advantages. Opting for serverless technology reduced development time and offers greater scalability. While using a Backend For Frontend architecture increases flexibility: if RGFB introduces new back-end systems, e.g. because of a merger, the anti-corruption layer simply collects the data from the new system and syncs it with the app’s own backend.
RGFB comprises 5 different star brands and their sub-brands, encompassing different needs, ambitions and aspirations. In developing a digital solution for the company, we needed to take this whole ecosystem into consideration.
It was important that each brand’s identity could be conveyed so that it would resonate with users, build a feeling of connection, and ultimately increase loyalty. However, developing separate apps would have meant a much larger investment.
We therefore proposed to develop one core app that could be rebranded for each sub-brand by applying different skins. This offered an efficient and cost-effective way to deliver a harmonised user experience, and at the same time, allow each brand to retain its own established identity.
