A temporary employment agency has a very unique place in the community compared to other recruitment agencies. The role of temporary employment agencies is to solve staffing shortages affecting the profitability of other businesses.
How do employment agencies work for employers?
Most people assume that temp agencies only provide workers to fill in for permanent employees who take brief amounts of time off. But they can also connect employers to qualified candidates for long-term contracts as well. And it’s not just replacement staffing either, some businesses hire extra people for special projects or seasonal events which only require temporary employees for a certain time period.
Employers call temporary employment agencies to cover:
- Planned vacation time
- Sick leave
- Personal emergency
- Maternity leave or paternity leave
- New system implementation
- Year End
- Seasonal projects
- Downsizing transitions
- Relocation of operations
- Fill in during a permanent search
The employment agency hires workers who can go to a new workplace and begin working with minimal training. The advantages of using a temporary employment agency include:
- Little training time needed
- The agency takes care of the hiring process
- Agency handles all payment of temp wages and insurance
- Continued revenue during the permanent employee’s time away
The temporary agency screens all their applicants, interviews them and often administers technical tests to measure proficiency in relevant job skills e.g. Excel testing. Temporary agencies also perform multiple reference checks before taking the applicant on as part of their team.
How do employment agencies work for job seekers?
Temporary employees occupy a unique space in the working community. These individuals enjoy the diversity of their jobs and the flexibility to take on contracts to suit their lifestyle.
These unique job seekers may:
- Have just moved to the area and need local working experience
- Enjoy meeting new people and taking on new challenges
- Use temporary assignments to build experience in an area
- Find temporary jobs more exciting than one permanent position
- Use the agency as a means for finding the working environment they work best in
When you need a position filled for a short time, the temporary employee you receive has prior experience doing the job. They need little training upon arrival and usually only need brief explanations about the job.
Saying that, the temporary employee should still have the following training at the place of employment:
- The jobs procedure management
- Policies regarding breaks and meal times
- Safety procedures and equipment
- Attendance policies
Temporary-to-Permanent Hiring
Many employers use temporary employment agencies to find qualified workers for permanent positions as well. Temporary-to-Permanent hiring is considered a “try before you buy” type of model, where the employer can hire someone on contract through an agency, before deciding if the hire should be made permanent. The recruiter will still handle much of the upfront work for employers, screening qualified candidates and pre-emptively narrowing the vast pool of job seekers into a stream of potentially viable prospective employees. Many job seekers who come through temporary agencies want to find permanent employment eventually and the employment agency will try match them to those opportunities.
Using a temporary employment agency to find permanent workers has these advantages:
- You receive qualified and flexible workers
- Outsourced recruiting saves time and money – temporary employees stay on the agency’s payroll until you decide to hire them as a permanent employee
- Employers can evaluate different employees on the job
- You can overlap the leaving of an employee with the evaluation of potential replacements
- You do not have to scan piles of resumes or interview unqualified applicants
If you have any questions about working with a temporary employment agency, please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@tempsahead.com.
