When running a business, you can plan around the staff you have, but when it comes to seasonal fluctuations in customer demand, time off for holidays by current employees or minimising your risk during periods of growth, temporary workers can come in as a huge advantage. Your customers want products or services and they want them quickly, so your supply chain needs to be agile and ready to perform at the drop of a hat. Express shipping, single item fulfilment and next day orders are incredibly common for retailers, and customers have come to expect them so you need to ensure that you are able to keep up with the demand placed upon you.
When employing temporary workers, you’ll want to employ the best recruitment agencies to help you, but the great thing is you don’t need to worry about employment contracts and the associated commitment, as they are their namesake: temporary. A staffing agency can work alongside you to help you to employ temporary workers depending on your specific needs.
Staffing agencies can be called upon to help you buffer seasonal variations with temporary workers. Christmas time can be incredibly busy for large numbers of businesses from high street retailers and supermarkets to factories and production lines. While it can be an advantage to offer additional hours and overtime to your existing workers who might want the extra money over the seasonal period, it’s unlikely that this will be enough to meet the customer demand. You don’t want to push and overwork your existing employees too much as their productivity will drop, so employing temporary workers is a great way to meet the demand.
You might find that your staff levels are perfect throughout the majority of the year but as soon as holiday season kicks in you are left with a skills gap in the office. Again, as opposed to letting your business suffer you can employ a recruitment agency to provide temporary workers in to plug the gap left by your employee’s holidays.
Using temporary workers can also reduce your risk during times of growth. Imagine you have a vision which has the potential to bring in a huge amount of additional revenue, but you don’t have the man power to implement it. You might not have enough staffing to pull people from current projects to work on your new idea, and you probably don’t want to wait six months until your quiet period to trial it out. Recruitment agencies can source staff to meet the needs you have to allow you to trial new ideas, iff you change your mind or the idea doesn’t work out you can terminate your temporary workers, or if it does prove to be the great idea you expected you can then look at converting temps to permanent members of staff now you know your risk has paid off.
In a fast paced working world temporary workers are there to help your business grow, develop and meet ever changing customer demands. Don’t fall behind; take advantage of staffing agencies who are there to help you.
