Some companies are trying to use different methods to reduce personnel costs while striving to ensure the highest quality of employees. As a result, recruiting companies offered the market a new service – “Temporary Staffing.”
In developed countries, along with the emergence of new technologies and industries, consulting companies began to emerge and develop rapidly, offering their clients all kinds of services to optimize business processes. This trend could not but touch upon such a delicate and vulnerable area as human resource management.
When is temporary staff needed?
There are three main reasons for pushing firms to resort to the services of a recruiting agency for the selection of temporary workers or to attract for a certain period of specialists who are on the staff of the agency.
- The first is the temporary need of the company for highly qualified specialists. These can be both short-term and medium-term projects carried out by the firm for an external customer. Obviously, the sought-after specialist is rare enough to be found through an advertisement in a newspaper.
- The second reason for hiring highly qualified temporary specialists is vacancies in the company for a short period – for example, for the period of vacations or holidays. In addition, it is much easier to resort to the services of, say, a hired assistant-translator from an agency than to spend time and effort on an independent search for an employee who will still have to be fired. The situation is similar with short-term projects within the company.
- The third group of reasons for hiring temporary workers is the seasonality of the business of some companies. First of all, this applies to firms using a large amount of low-skilled labor. There are entire groups of companies whose business itself depends on seasonal fluctuations in demand. During the peak season, the company’s staff expands and just as quickly decreases when the demand for this service passes. And so on until next season.
Organizations that strictly adhere to labor and tax laws use the services of freelance professionals and workers with whom they have entered into temporary employment agreements or contracts to eliminate legal and tax problems. The agency undertakes to conclude an employment contract with a specialist, pay taxes, and insurance.
Benefits of Temporary Staffing
Among the benefits:
- Obtaining qualified staff in the required quantity and in a short period of time;
- Reducing the cost of compensation packages
- Reducing the volume of personnel records management;
- No downtime if the temporary worker is sick or goes on vacation because under the contract, the agency is obliged to provide a replacement for this period;
- The ability to change employees an unlimited number of times if they are not suitable for one reason or another;
- The opportunity to invite the employee you like to your staff means that you avoid the cost of searching and recruiting personnel.
Who might be interested in this work?
The concept of temporary workers as solely unskilled labor is hopelessly outdated. Of course, there is no need to involve professional actors or marketers to conduct advertising distribution of toothpaste on the street. But in almost all industries, highly qualified specialists can be temporarily hired. In the US market, the most popular are:
- Administration workers;
- Accountants, auditors;
- Equipment maintenance specialists;
- Advertising and marketing specialists;
- Service staff.
Legal aspects of the relationship
When the applicant becomes an employee of the agency, he/she is obligatorily introduced to the procedure and ethics of the implementation of “leasing” contracts. The employee will be told which orders of the interim management he/she must follow without question and which he/she can evade. In each specific case, the forms, volumes, and terms of the contract are discussed in detail.
Relations between the agency and the company are also carefully regulated. The first step on this path is the description of the problem that the client plans to solve with the help of personnel leasing methods. After analyzing the problem, the agency’s consultant will recommend the customer one of the existing schemes for working with temporary staff.
The following points are necessarily fixed in the contract:
- Essential terms of the contract;
- The salary of the hired specialist;
- Agency fee;
- The scope, timing, and criteria for evaluating the work to which a specialist is invited.
The customer guarantees the payment of the agency’s bills in full on time and the provision of the agreed working conditions to the invited specialist.
For its part, the agency guarantees the confidentiality of all information to which the provided employee will be allowed and the quality of the work performed. The agency is obliged to provide a replacement in the event of illness or absence from work of the hired employee.
The contract is supported by the conclusion of a tripartite agreement between the customer company, the agency, and the employee involved. And the temprory staff becomes a permanent solution for the companies.
