In early August, Avionté welcomed over 1,000 clients, partners, and staffing professionals to its annual user conference, CONNECT, making it the largest conference Avionté has ever hosted. While this was the first CONNECT to be held virtually, the conference maintained its reputation as one of the key events in the staffing industry. Avionté CONNECT serves as an opportunity for Avionté to build stronger relationships with its customers, educate the industry on the latest product releases, and offer a platform for customers to be heard and help drive the future of the product. The company has hosted this event for over a decade, which it continues to offer free of charge to its customers.

CONNECT 2020 was held over three days and consisted of over 33 hours of content, including 32 unique breakout sessions, main stage addresses from the Avionté CEO and product leadership, and virtual booths for live Q & A. This year’s conference was sponsored by eleven Avionté integration partners who contributed breakout session content, offered virtual booths and activities to learn more about their product offerings, and helped give away hundreds of prizes and gift cards to attendees. Sponsors also hosted evening entertainment events, such as a trivia night and a live-streamed dueling pianos show, to make the conference fun and memorable.

At this year’s event, Avionté announced it will be releasing a new staffing paycard solution in late 2020. The CHANGE card seamlessly integrates with the Avionté system and is the first paycard designed specifically for the staffing industry. CHANGE serves to address the unique challenges of staffing firms and offers a program that incentivizes employees for good behaviors that benefit both the employee and the staffing firm’s bottom line. This new solution is a product of Avionté’s continued efforts to be a stronger partner in innovation for its customers and accelerate the pace and consistency of delivering new solutions to the staffing and recruiting industry.

Navigating the global pandemic and transitioning to remote work were key topics in this year’s Avionté CONNECT conference. The three-day conference kicked off virtually on Tuesday, August 4th with a streamed address from Avionté CEO, Karl Florida, sharing an optimistic view for the state of the staffing industry and the health of Avionté, despite the economic uncertainty brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. “As we look ahead at the rest of 2020 and try to peer into 2021, we see tempered optimism,” Florida stated in his address. Florida cited predictions from Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA), noting that SIA had initially forecasted a decline of 21% of staffing industry revenue for this year versus last year, but issued an improved forecast in July 2020 of a 17% decline, along with an 11% estimate of growth for 2021. “This growth is well above the average and would represent quite a rebound,” says Florida.

Other guest speakers such as Tom Erb, staffing industry consultant and President of Tallann Resources, shared Florida’s sense of hope. “There are always silver linings in every downturn,” Erb shared in his CONNECT session. Erb cited examples, such as the thinning out of competition, the accessibility of candidates, clients and prospects, and the value of recruiting expertise in an economic downturn. Attendees also had the opportunity to learn about COVID-19 legislation from American Staffing Association’s Toby Malara and Brittany Sakata. They shared valuable knowledge and insight into recent policies for returning safely to work and business relief available to main small businesses and staffing agencies.

Avionté’s clients are located across the United States and Canada. The virtual format of this year’s CONNECT conference allowed for a drastic increase in attendance and participation. Many attendees and speakers expressed their excitement to gather in-person in St. Paul, Minnesota again for the conference, and look forward to next year’s event and better months ahead.

About Avionté
Avionté Staffing Software provides innovative front and back office staffing software solutions to over 900 customers and nearly 25,000 users throughout the U.S. and Canada. With one end-to-end staffing software solution, staffing agencies have access to the information and tools they need – anytime, anywhere via any device – to maximize productivity and profits.