At first glance it may seem as though hiring temporary employees is not as beneficial as permanent employees – but that simply isn’t true. The fact of the matter is that both provide different benefits, and play very different roles.
If you are planning on hiring temporary employees, you should understand both the pros and cons that are involved.
Pros of Hiring Temporary Employees
Hiring temporary employees can provide a number of advantages to any business. Some of the most important are that it will let you:
• Adjust to workload fluctuations
Temporary employees can be hired as and when you need to cope with any workload fluctuations. The fluctuations may be seasonal or due to special projects, or may be because of absent employees. Whatever the case, temps can be hired as a stopgap measure.
• Save on costs
In general it is more cost-efficient to hire temporary employees than permanent staff. The fact that you only need to hire temps for the duration that you need their services plays a big part in that. More importantly however you don’t need to provide health insurance, vacation or sick pay, and other benefits.
• Assess potential talents without committing
It is impossible to be fully assured that employees are a good fit before you hire them. But what if you were to hire temps instead, see how they perform and fit in, and only then offer them a long-term contract? Suffice to say you can hire temps to assess potential talents and only commit later on.
All in all hiring temporary employees will let you cope with your recruitment needs in a cost-efficient yet effective manner. Additionally it will let you pave the way for future recruitment as well if you have the need.
Cons of Hiring Temporary Employees
In spite of its advantages, hiring temporary employees does have several drawbacks too – and you need to be aware of them. Some of the more notable cons are that you will:
• Waste time on training
Although you may only hire temps with the right qualifications and skills, some training will be inevitably required. That means someone from your staff will have to spend time training a temp, each and every time you hire a new temp. Compared to hiring permanent staff this could waste quite a bit of time in the long run.
• Have to deal with legal issues
The status of temporary employees is often the cause of various legal issues – and it varies in different jurisdictions. At very least you must be absolutely clear about which classification your employees fall under, and any legalities that pertain to their contracts, benefits, protections, and so on.
• Lose money if temps don’t work out
In general temps are more cost-efficient – unless they don’t work out. If you hire temps that aren’t able to do the job you’ll be throwing money away, and will have to pay more to once again attract, interview, and hire new temps. To avoid this you need to optimize your recruitment, and make sure you hire the right people.
One way to minimize the loss is to streamline the hiring process through outsourcing background checks. Using a third-party criminal record checker saves businesses time and money and makes the assessment stage much more efficient so that new hires can start immediately.
Some of these issues may be mitigated if you work with reliable temp agencies. However in many cases it is really just part and parcel of the difference between hiring temporary and permanent employees.
Final Words
Now that you understand the pros and cons of hiring temporary employees, you should be able to see what sets it apart. As long as you make sure that you are hiring temps for the right reasons and in the right way, you should be able to benefit from them easily.
