Several clients have approached us recently with questions around hiring a temporary contractor vs a permanent employee. The main concern being that temporary staff are a waste of time and effort, however this is quite the opposite. If you are not using temps, your business is probably losing out. Here are 8 reasons why.
Super-fast hiring. Permanent hiring can take weeks and months due to notice periods being up to 8 weeks, delaying the start date. Temp hiring can be completed in days: no long interview processes or notice periods. Recruitment agencies have a pool of candidates they can call on at short notice that are suitable for various roles with a strong skill set.
Try before you buy. Hiring a temporary contractor allows you to work with the staff member for a period of time before you commit to hiring them on a permanent basis. They may have a great skills match, however “team fit” you cannot gauge from an interview. Recruiting temp to perm is a far more reliable method than the interview process, as you can actually observe the person doing the job you’re hiring for in order to make a fully informed decision. If that role isn’t a good fit for them, you might find they’re just the person you need for a different role.
Avoid hiring due to pressure. Sometimes there is added pressure hiring a permanent employee; interviews take time, work pilling up on your team and pressure from management to hire immediately. By hiring a temp in the interim, it also means your permanent new hire does not arrive to a pile of work on their first day.
With temps, your workforce is instantly scalable. Whether it’s a new business acquisition, a system implementation, end of financial year or new regulatory change, projects pop up and adding a temp reduces workloads, avoids overstretching your existing staff and alleviates pressure.
Save your current staff, reduce permanent staff burnout turnover. Temps means you don’t have to make your existing team take on extra work which ensures that productivity stays high without exhausting your loyal team. A recent survey from Seek.com revealed that 75% of professional workers are open to a new role in 2021. Don’t give your high performers the extra push.
Seek have recently completed a survey where 1/3 of hiring of managers start out as temps. If you think temps are somehow inferior workers who are unable to secure a job this is not the case. More than a third of managers start out as temporary workers, meaning that the temp you hire could be a future leader and help steer your business to success.
Temps bring new skills & knowledge. Fresh blood in the form of temps brings valuable new skills your company can use. By nature, temps have experienced more environments than your permanent staff and they are well positioned to give a helpful outside perspective on your company processes and may have useful ideas obtained from your competitors.
Temps keep your costs down. If you are busy at Year End or working on a Transaction or Project, however have quieter periods? Don’t waste money hiring a permanent staff member to cover seasonal or unpredictable surges in demand. With temps, you can have as many people as you need when demand is high and reduce costs for the rest of the year.
