When you need to get work done NOW but not ready to add to staff, a temporary / contract employee is often the best solution!

When all things are going your way, your business growing with only good things in sight, hiring new staff on a permanent basis can make good business sense.  But what happens when the future is uncertain and there’s lots of unknowns about what’s coming next? 

You still need work done, but hiring now and laying off tomorrow is nobody’s idea of smart staffing!   

We have found that the staffing solution when the future is uncertain lies in resurrecting more flexible ways of getting work done which includes the strategic use of temporary / contract employees.   Talented temporary and contract employees can keep your company or team lean, ready to grow or shrink as your business changes, staffed at levels that avoid those nasty cut backs IF things get rough.  Is a smart wau to get work one while protecting the job security of your core employees!

Believe it or not some companies have embraced staffing flexibility to the point where they purposefully limit their number of core employees – even when business is in growth mode – keeping a significant portion of their staff in flexible arrangements, either auditioning to become a core employee, using specialized skills to staff projects, or filling in for core employees who are on short term or longer term leaves of absence.  These employers are fully bought into the many benefits of flexible staffing as a strategy, not a short term solution.

Because PACE Staffing Network is not actually a “temp agency” but instead offers the full range of staffing solutions, we are prepared to talk about the pluses and minuses of each strategy.

Our clients regularly use temporary or contract employees when they need to….

• Provide coverage for a leave of absence of a core employee.
• Add some specialized skills or leadership for project work that isn’t targeted to go beyond a year
• Support a planned or unexpected uptick in business activity with the goal of avoiding the high costs of overtime or the burnout of core staff.
• Provide extra support for product launches – where you’re not quite sure how many people you need to hire to support a new product or service
• Reconfigure work and aren’t sure when jobs they’re going to need in the future
• Provide quick coverage for an unexpected turnover- the extra help your staff needs when they suddenly become short handed
• Get rid of some nasty backlogs – filing, scanning, data entry projects that tend to stack up and are starting to hurt the team’s productivity.
• Audition one or more employees before add them to their team.

Check out this blog to learn more about flexible staffing solutions …..

One of the reasons some employers don’t utilize temporary staffing solutions even when they need them,  is because they think temporary or contract workers are just too expensive.  To compare the costs of using a “temp” compared to the costs of hiring direct, check out this blog.   The comparison may surprise you.  

If you think you could use a temporary employee for an upcoming staffing scenario – we’d love to help.  Its never too early to get started on the planning process.  You can CONNECT with our Partner Services team by entering your information below.