Many organizations are choosing to hire seasonal and temporary staff in order to offer much needed relief in the workplace. There are pros and cons to employing temporary workers, but fortunately, you don’t have to let the negatives outweigh the positives.
While every organization will have its own specific needs, these are some of the ways that you can take the stress out of employing temporary workers.
Start Early
Sometimes in the business world, things can be unpredictable. Life happens and you never know when illness, family emergencies, employee movement, or leaves of absence might cause an imbalance in your workplace flow.
Leaving your hiring to the last minute when you need it most will only cause stress and be counterintuitive to the relief that hiring temporary workers can offer. When you plan for temp workers as soon as you know your business needs it, you avoid working with mismatched talent. Instead, you’ll bring in skilled talent that will transition easily into your organization.
Look for Traits
Once your business has made the decision to bring on temporary workers, it can be hard to avoid quickly taking on someone with the right skill set. The reality of the working world, though, is that even a highly qualified employee with the right skill set might not fit into your workplace culture after all.
By taking the time to make a list of the traits you most value in a temporary worker, you can include important factors like workplace ethic and personality in your hiring process. This isn’t to say that a highly skilled candidate should be ignored, but you can reduce potential workplace stresses by hiring according to traits as well.
Be Transparent
With many companies becoming aware of the benefits of hiring temporary workers, many candidates will accept a temporary position in the hopes that it may become a full time position down the road. When a temporary hire has this mentality and it turns out your business isn’t looking to transition their role into something long term, the hire might leave or approach their job with a short-timer’s attitude.
A lack of communication and clarity can have negative consequences on your business, even turning all your hiring efforts into a waste of time. For a hiring manager who has put time and money into hiring and training a quality temporary worker, miscommunications can lead to disappointment and confusion.
To avoid this stress, be completely transparent about the job, the duration of employment, and the expectations you have of your temporary employee.
Enlist an Agency
As any hiring manager can tell you, there are several steps in the hiring process that require attention to detail and a certain level of thoroughness. Going through all the steps of the hiring process for a temporary or seasonal position can eat up a lot of time and effort. When you’re looking for workplace relief, using all your energy to hire someone can take away from the ease and benefits of temporary workers.
When you work with an agency, you can skip over several steps of the hiring process and have the best candidates arrive at your business ready to work. Working with a staffing agency takes the stress out of employing temporary workers, as they’lltake care of the job posting, interviewing, paperwork, and other HR details.
Above all, building a relationship with a staffing agency is a smart move in the long run, as you develop trust in the staffing agency’s ability to bring you great candidates. With the help of an agency, you can take the stress out of employing temporary workers and focus on the benefits of temp workers such as increased flexibility, workplace relief, and help where you need it most.
