A weekly placement pipeline review that finds stalled cases

Placements rarely fail loudly. They stall. A worker waits for a document, a clearance sits in a queue, a client has not replied, and each of these is small enough to ignore for a week. By the time the delay is visible to a client, it has already cost a month.

A weekly review is the cheapest control an agency has over this. It takes thirty minutes if the meeting follows a fixed order and works from records, not from what people remember.

Before the meeting: one list, as of today

The review is only as good as the list it reads from. Before the meeting, have a single view of all open placements with these columns:

• worker and employer client
• current stage
• date the placement entered that stage
• next action and its owner
• any deadline or warning attached

If building that list takes an hour, the meeting is not the first thing to fix. A list that cannot be produced in minutes is itself a finding.

Part 1: read by stage (5 minutes)

Count placements per stage and look at the shape. A healthy pipeline thins gradually from selection to deployment. Two shapes need a question:

• A bulge in one stage: many placements waiting at the same point. What is common to them?
• An empty stage after a full one: work is not moving on. Is something missing, or is a step not being recorded?

Part 2: read by age (10 minutes)

Within each stage, sort by time since entry and read from the oldest. Use your own expected duration per stage, taken from past placements, as the line. For each placement past that line, ask one question:

What is the next action, who owns it, and by when?

Write the answer down in the record, not in the meeting notes alone. If the answer is "waiting on the client" or "waiting on a third party", record who you are waiting on and the date you will chase.

Avoid discussing causes at length. The meeting finds stalled cases and assigns the next move. Root causes belong in a separate, less frequent review.

One workspace, every employer client.

Choose an employer client and every view follows, from the Work Queue to Reports.

Book a DemoSee the solutions

Part 3: fulfilment against demand (5 minutes)

For each open employer demand, read three numbers: ordered, deployed and outstanding. Ask whether the placements in progress are enough to close the outstanding amount in the period the client expects. If not, either more candidates are needed now, or the client should hear about the gap from you before they ask. A monthly status report for each employer client is a good place to say it.

Part 4: what is coming due (5 minutes)

Look ahead at deadlines and expiries in the next period you have chosen. This is not a full compliance review. It is a check that nothing in the next few weeks has no owner.

Part 5: close with owners and dates (5 minutes)

End by reading back the actions: who does what by when. Send the list the same day. Start the next review by going through it.

Rules that keep the meeting short

• Same day and time each week.
• One person runs it and one person keeps the record.
• No new topics in the meeting. Park them.
• If an action has no owner at the end, the manager takes it.
• Anything over two minutes goes to a separate conversation.

Handling a placement that stays stalled

Some placements stay on the list for several weeks. When the same case appears three weeks in a row, change the question. Ask what would have to be true for it to move, and who can make that happen. If the answer is outside your control, decide whether the client should be told now, and what you would propose.

It also helps to note why a case is stalled in a few standard words, such as waiting for a document, waiting for a clearance or waiting for the client. After a few weeks the notes show where delays gather, which is the useful input for improving the process itself.

Where Worker Vault fits

Worker Vault gives the review its list. The Overview shows open demands, headcount ordered, deployed and outstanding shortfall, and in-flight placements by group. Each placement shows its stage timeline with dates and warnings, and the pipeline views flag approaching deadlines. Records and next actions stay on the placement, so the conversation does not depend on whose spreadsheet is open.

The review itself still belongs to your team. To see how the pipeline looks with your own employer clients, Book a Demo, or read about the recruitment workflow and the stages of a placement.