Five Tips for Hiring Seasonal Workers

It’s very common for organizations to look to the support of seasonal temporary workers to during peak production times. In fact, hiring seasonal workers on a temporary basis can be one of the best ways to realize a positive return on investment for your business because it’s less costly than hiring regular employees.

Each year, major retailers hire seasonal temps to help out during the holidays and support increased shopping demands. The biggest industries that use seasonal help are manufacturing, retail, hospitality, customer service, sales, and shipping and transportation. However, any company may choose to hire seasonal temps to cover summer vacations or maternity leaves for regular employees.

Seasonal assignments may last for a few days to a few months, depending on the need of each organization. During this time, it’s up to the company to provide training and supervision so that seasonal temps have the ability to be productive. There are some key ways that any business can get the most from their temporary seasonal staff.

  1. Create accurate seasonal job descriptions. Your first step in maximizing seasonal staff ROI is to write seasonal job descriptions that clearly spell out the tasks and responsibilities of each assignment. Your seasonal workforce may have limited time to get projects completed, so make sure they are reasonable given the scope of work.
  2. Provide training and resources to get the job done. Set up all seasonal work stations and systems in advance to make sure you get the more out of seasonal temps. Arrange for an orientation and training day, utilizing your seasoned employees as mentors to seasonal staffers. Give your seasonal workforce access to the information and resources to be successful.
  3. Set clear goals and deadlines for tasks and projects. Your seasonal workers can only accomplish what you expect if you communicate this to them. Provide seasonal temps with a list of tasks they are to complete, along with daily and weekly goals. Provide reasonable deadlines for getting things done.
  4. Give seasonal workers incentives to perform to highest standards. Seasonal workers often respond well to short-term incentives because they may not have access to the same benefits as your regular employees. Set fun contests and provide bonuses for top performers. Give seasonal workers incentives such as on-site lunches, wellness services, and discounts for merchandise.
  5. Treat seasonal workforce with respect and offer some permanent jobs. The reason why some individuals take on seasonal work is to prove their worth for future employment consideration. Remember to treat all seasonal workers with respect and appreciation, offering a few the opportunity to become permanent employees based on their performance. You can find out who may be interested in perm placement by talking with your staffing agency.

Seasonal workers can be a valuable way to stay on top of busy production periods and project demands. Remember to make the most of your seasonal staffers by giving them rewarding assignments and interesting tasks.

How to Hire the Best Temporary Staff

When you need temporary workers you want to hire the best temporary staff available: Those with the right skills, drive, and attitude who will add value to your bottom line. As more organizations move towards a model of treating human resources – including temporary resources – as an asset rather than an expense, the competition for the best workers is increasing. Through the right temp agency, you can access the help you need to find, screen, and hire the best temporary staff for your organization.

Hire the Best Temp Staff: It Starts with Your Temp Agency

Every organization is different, including yours. Every temp agency is also different; some agencies may specialize in very narrow industry niches, while others are broad and established enough to specialize in several industries. As a hiring manger, it can be difficult to determine which type of agency is the right one to use to hire the best temp staff for your particular industry. There are, however, several advantages to choosing an agency with specialties in several areas:

  • A multi-specialty temp agency is more likely to be able to meet your current demands as well as future demands
  • A multi-specialty temp agency is likely to have a greater number of qualified temporary workers in its databases
  • A multi-specialty temp agency has deeper resources in the staffing industry to help you hire the best temp staff whenever and wherever need arises

These factors can save you from hiring temps through multiple channels, which can escalate into a confusing, and costly, endeavor when your organization is working on a tight schedule, detracting from your ability to focus on the drive to hire the best temp staff. A multi-specialty temp agency can also save you time through streamlined candidate screening, since an agency accustomed to working in multiple areas will already be familiar with best practices in hiring wherever your need may be.

Hire the Best Temp Staff: Thorough Screening Ensures Quality Candidates

All too many organizations shorten the candidate screening process when hiring temp staff. Although the temporary nature of these assignments makes it tempting to try to save expenses through reduced screening, organizations that follow this practice are usually putting themselves at a disadvantage. Several benefits of temp staffing, including the ability to move to permanent hiring based on a temp’s performance, are diminished or erased when screening is skipped.

Especially for longer assignments, your organization needs to know the skills and attributes of those on temporary payroll. Experienced temp agencies make it easy for you to screen candidates for quality by putting a range of technological and more traditional screening tools at your disposal, ensuring that you hire the best temp staff possible. Make sure that your agency screens its candidates before recommending them for your open assignments, and perform your own secondary screening whenever possible.

Hire the Best Temp Staff: Adopt a Long Term View

Temp agencies are of enormous benefit when your organization needs workers at the last minute for assignments of short duration. Still, last minute changes and rushed temporary hiring can be taxing and reduce your chances of recruiting top quality candidates. What if you could project when and where such help was likely to be needed and plan accordingly? An established temp agency will have the experience needed to partner with your organization to create a long term hiring plan that addresses your needs for temp staff and can make the best temp staff on its roster available to you during your rush times through such prior planning.

The competition to hire the best temp staff is not expected to slow anytime soon. Make sure that your organization is prepared and in a position to hire the best available candidates by working with your temp agency to address your organization’s temporary hiring needs. With a comprehensive temporary hiring strategy you can add value to your organization while saving costs, a winning approach.

How Staffing Agencies Can Save you Time and Money

There are a number of ways that staffing agencies can assist you in hiring the right talent for every job opening, but essentially they act as an extension of your existing human resources department. If your HR department consists of only you, the owner, then outsourcing some of your hiring practices can be a tremendous boost to both your productivity and your sanity.

Certain HR decisions, like hiring, can be overwhelming and often bring no immediate monetary return to your company. And hiring the wrong person can have a lasting impact on company morale, productivity and the bottom line. Here just a few ways staffing agencies can take the headache out of hiring.

Easier to Find Employees with Specific Talent

While you probably know your industry very well, you may be hopeless when it comes to understanding some of the niche roles in your company. If you’re not a writer or a designer, you may not know how to attract the right marketing professional to your team. If you’re looking to launch an annual fundraiser, you’ll need an event planner who can help realize your vision. Staffing agencies can help you identify and contact talented individuals you might not know how to find. They can help you assess employees, check their references and identify candidates who will fit your needs.

Reduce the Cost of New Hire, Bad Hires

Hiring any employee is a large investment of time, effort and resources to post a job, screen applicants, interview and then train a new employee. Staffing agencies take that cost out of your hand when you contract their services. Yes, it requires a relatively hefty fee to actually work with the recruiting company, but think about it in long term.

Additionally, using a staffing agency can drastically reduce your chances of making the wrong hire. The Department of Labor estimates the cost of replacing a employee to be one-third of their salary. However, hiring the wrong employee and fixing the mistake within 6 months can cost as much as 2.5 times the person’s salary. Even at $40,000 a year, that is a $120,000 mistake, including their salary.  Isn’t that worth the cost of doing it right the first time?

A Motivated Job Search

Let’s face it: there are a number of tasks that you would prefer to do instead of combing through resumes and applications for the right hire. Many small business owners will drag out the process, costing themselves more money as they struggle by without the proper staff.  Since you’re paying them to find the right employees, a staffing firm will not suffer from a lack of motivation. And since they can only compete on their reputations, these agencies have become skilled at weeding out potential job candidates who are not properly motivated or lack the skills necessary for a specific job. Since they are working for you, not a jobseeker, a recruitment agency will work to assess potential employees to make sure they’re a perfect fit. This will help you cut down the risk of a bad hire, while also minimizing the time and effort spent identifying quality candidates.

Top Five Advantages Of Using A Temp Staffing Agency

Today’s internet-driven, split-second business environments demand organizations be: v  Nimble v  Efficient v Strategic. 

All while living up to the mantra of “faster, better, cheaper”, with stakeholders all expecting more to be done with less. Juggling these demands puts enormous pressure on a company’s ability to effectively staff to meet dynamically changing needs. The best-laid staffing plans can quickly go awry with an unanticipated big new project or a sudden surge in business.

Many organizations rely on temporary workers to help smooth out the peaks and valleys in constantly fluctuating staffing needs. Temporary employees can not only help with a wide variety of operational and business tasks, companies are also attracted to partnering with proven temporary staffing agencies for numerous other benefits. Read more about Temp Staffing Agency