Kelly

According to Tammy Hink, VP of Kelly Professional & Industrial, these three red flags mean that your staffing partner relationship needs a closer look: 1. You're managing more than three vendors for the same site. Each additional vendor dilutes accountability, creates inconsistent onboarding, and makes compliance harder to track across your workforce. 2. Your agency can't provide fill rate, time-to-fill, or retention data for your account without being asked. A partner that isn't proactively tracking performance metrics isn’t managing your workforce. 3. You've never audited your staffing partner's payroll or billing practices. One manufacturer discovered their previous staffing firm had been overbilling $50,000 per week through fraudulent payroll charges. That's $2.6 million a year that went undetected because nobody looked. A staffing partner should operate as an extension of your HR function. If any of these sound familiar, it's worth a conversation. Read more about what to look for in a staffing partner at the link in comments 🔗

School schedules are shifting right now, and for millions of working parents, the hardest weeks aren't behind them. According to Bright Horizons, 87% of working parents report interruptions, distraction, and worry about their children's schedules during the summer. But those pressures don't lift when the bell rings. They concentrate into transition weeks of new routines, staggered start dates, and changing pickup times. In 52% of two-parent households, both parents work full time. And one in five workers has left a job over a lack of family care benefits. The accommodations that kept your team intact over the summer still matter right now. → Hold off on major deadlines and offsites while schedules are still settling. → Shift standing late-afternoon meetings that conflict with pickup times. → Make schedule conflicts something employees can discuss openly, not something they manage around quietly. These adjustments cost nothing. They also send a clear message about whether your organization treats retention as a year-round priority. Read more about what the back-to-school transition costs working parents and what employers can do about it at the link in comments 🔗

If you've invested in AI over the past year, you've probably been asked the same question: "Are we seeing the results we expected?" For many organizations, the answer is still, "Not yet." In a recent article, Nadja Burns, VP of Digital Workforce Innovation and Product Development at Kelly, explores why. Her advice was simple: before introducing AI, understand how the work gets done today. Look at each step in the process and ask: → Which tasks require human accountability? → Which involve regulated or sensitive data? → Which rely on contextual judgment? → Which are repetitive or pattern-based? → Where is human connection essential? Those questions help define where AI can support employees and where people should remain responsible for the work. According to the latest Kelly Global Re:work Report, 73% of STEM executives believe AI will reward people who learn to work with it. That applies to organizations too. The returns come when technology is aligned to how work actually moves through the business, rather than expected to fix the workflow on its own. Read more at the link in comments 🔗

If you're not getting the results you want from your staffing partners, the issue may be closer to home than you think. Tammy Hink, VP at Kelly Professional & Industrial, knows that the relationship runs both ways, and that employers who invest in it get measurably better outcomes. Three things make the biggest difference: 1. Give your staffing partner a single, responsive point of contact. The faster feedback flows, the faster placements improve. When hiring managers are unreachable or feedback is delayed by days, even the best recruiters are working blind. 2. Consolidate your vendor relationships. Working with too many agencies at once dilutes accountability, creates competing candidate pipelines, and often leads to weaker placements. A focused partnership gives your agency the context and volume to build real expertise in your business. 3. Share the "why" behind the requisition. An agency that understands what changed in the business, why the role is open, and what success looks like beyond the job description will deliver stronger candidates than one that's just matching resumes to requirements. A bad hire can cost 30% to 50% of that person's annual salary. The right staffing partner helps you avoid that, but only if the partnership is built for it. Read more about what to look for in a workforce partner at the link in comments 🔗

How do you evaluate candidates when AI is making resumes sound more alike? A 2025 Kelly survey found that 79% of job seekers now use AI during the application process, while 66% of hiring managers use AI-detection tools as part of candidate screening. Whether you see that as a problem or simply the new normal, one thing has changed: more candidates arrive at the interview looking qualified on paper. That's why the interview deserves more attention than ever. Instead of asking candidates to describe a skill in general terms, ask them to walk through a specific example. - What was the situation?  - What was their role?  - What actions did they personally take?  - What was the outcome?  - How did they measure success? Strong candidates can explain not only what they know, but how they applied that knowledge. They can describe decisions they made, challenges they encountered, and results they achieved. As AI becomes a standard part of the job search process, employers need interview strategies that go deeper than the resume. At Kelly, we help organizations build smarter hiring processes by combining recruiting expertise, workforce insights, and strategies designed to identify the right talent faster.

Kelly leaders recently traveled from across the globe — APAC, EMEA, and North America — to spend a few days together at our Detroit headquarters.   We did something we hadn't done in a long time: we brought everyone together for our all-company picnic. New coworkers shook hands for the first time, teammates from different regions caught up in person, and colleagues across departments exchanged ideas in the office.   We managed to pack about 250 of us into one frame for what might be my biggest selfie yet.   We also welcomed Alan Stukalsky, our new Chief Product and Technology Officer. His first day at Kelly happened to land right in the middle of this, and he jumped in immediately, meeting our global leaders and getting a firsthand feel for what makes this team different.   Weeks like this remind me what our global footprint means. Colleagues from around the world all pulling in the same direction for the clients and talent who count on us. This is how we build the trust and connection that make us stronger as one enterprise.   As we count down to our 80th anniversary this October, this is the kind of week that gets me excited for what's ahead. We are Kelly. 💚

Hiring across multiple states? Pay transparency requirements may be more complex than your job posting template was designed to handle. Today, 16 states and Washington, D.C., require salary disclosures, and additional states are considering legislation. For employers hiring remotely, a single job posting can be subject to requirements in multiple jurisdictions. Vincent Standiford, Legislative Compliance Lead at Kelly, advises employers to treat pay transparency as part of their hiring strategy, not as a one-time compliance update. He recommends addressing three areas: → Review your compensation structure. Clear pay bands and a documented compensation philosophy make it easier to support pay transparency requirements as they evolve. → Conduct an internal pay equity review before publishing ranges. Once compensation information becomes public, employees and candidates will naturally compare roles and pay practices. → Update job posting templates to account for the full disclosure picture. Depending on the jurisdiction, that may include benefits information, bonus eligibility, equity compensation, and other forms of compensation beyond salary ranges. As hiring becomes more distributed, employers are balancing candidate expectations, compliance requirements, and workforce planning at the same time. Building the right internal structures now means absorbing new state requirements as routine updates rather than compliance scrambles. Read more on essential pay transparency laws at the link in comments 🔗

How many contractors are currently working for your organization? If your team can't answer that question with confidence, you're likely dealing with three issues: 1. You don't have a complete view of your external workforce. 2. You don't know whether you're paying consistent rates across suppliers and markets. 3. You can't confirm every worker is being engaged compliantly. That's becoming a bigger challenge as contingent work grows. U.S. contingent assignments increased 5.6% from 2024 to 2025, and an estimated 10% to 30% of employers are misclassifying workers in ways that may not hold up to regulatory scrutiny. Ben Decker, VP of Enterprise Workforce Solutions at Kelly, explains what organizations discover once they gain visibility into their contingent workforce. According to Ben, that's when inconsistent pay rates, duplicate suppliers, and compliance gaps start coming into view. A vendor management system helps by giving organizations one place to track their external workforce. But Ben's point is that technology alone won't solve the problem. Someone still needs to manage suppliers, enforce consistent processes, and make the decisions a platform can't. In the full article, Ben explains how organizations can move from a simple headcount question to better visibility, stronger cost controls, and a more consistent approach to managing contingent labor. Link in comments.

In a recent report from Monster, 95% of job seekers said they've come across a suspicious job offer, and 53% said they were personally targeted by a scam. Read more takeaways from Monster's 2026 Job Scam Report: https://hubs.li/Q04q18kj0 Get more of this week's top workforce stories from the latest Need to Know Briefing: https://hubs.li/Q04q14Ts0 For more information on identifying and reporting job scams, visit our job scam protection hub: https://hubs.li/Q04q166T0

A high-tech manufacturing facility in Memphis was processing more than 600 labor requests a year while production demand kept climbing.  Every unfilled role on the floor meant missed output, delayed shipments, and overtime costs eating into margins.  They needed to fill hundreds of manufacturing and support positions quickly, without sacrificing workforce quality or disrupting production continuity. Kelly deployed an embedded on-site team that worked alongside facility leadership, engaging regularly with supervisors and using firsthand visibility into daily operations to identify workforce gaps in real time and recruit ahead of demand. That approach delivered: - 585 hires against 604 requests - 94.7% fill rate - 70% of positions filled within 15 to 30 days - Net workforce gain of 300 employees during the reporting period Kelly earned master vendor status and is now supporting a ramp of 600 additional employees. When production can't pause and hundreds of roles need filling simultaneously, you need a workforce partner with boots on the ground, embedded in your operation and close enough to act with the same urgency as your own team. Read the full case study at the link in comments 🔗