*FLEXIBLE STAFFING SOLUTIONS: When a “temporary staffing solution” is the better option!
When you need to get work done NOW but are not quite ready to add to staff on a regular basis, a temporary / contract employee is often the best solution!
When a business is growing, with only opportunities for growth in sight, hiring new staff for roles intended to be “permanent” make good business sense. But what happens if you need to some extra arms and legs to tend to current business, but the future is uncertain, ie there’s lots of unknowns about what’s coming next? What happens when you just need a break from all the administrative, legal, and financial headaches associated with being an employer…and just want to get work done without the hassle of hiring?
Hiring today only to lay off tomorrow is nobody’s idea of smart staffing!
We have found that in the face of uncertainty, more flexible ways of getting work done, as opposed to just reflexively adding to staff, is often the better solution. Temporary and contract staff are considerd fastest and easiest way to move into the world of staffing flexibility. By using talented temporary and contract employees to keep current work moving ,you can keep your workforce lean, ready to grow or shrink as your business changes. You’ll also avoid those nasty cut backs that happen when you’ve forecasted growth but that’s not what actually happens.
Flexible Staffing as a Strategy
Throughout the post covid build back, most of our clients tended to embrace staffing flexibility. They purposefully limited their number of core employees and kept a targeted percentage of their staff in temporary or contracted roles. The flexible components of their workforces were either in various stages of auditioning to become a core employee, working on projects, or filling in for core employees who were out for longer term leaves of absence. These employers bought into the benefits of staffing flexibility as a long term rather than short term solution. They used temporary or contract staff to….
Provide coverage for a leave of absence
Add specialized skills or experienced leadership for project work
Used temporary staff to avoid having their core folks move into overtime or become burned out from work overloads.
Provide extra support for product launches – places where they weren’t quite sure how many people they needed to hire to support a new product or service
Buy time to reconfigure work knowing that changes in technology could eliminate some roles down the road.
Provide quick coverage for an unexpected turnover so that their teams wouldn’t lose a beat
Get rid of morale shaking backlogs – all those filing, scanning, data entry projects that tend to stack up when you get busy
Audition an employee for a core role before extending an offer of employment
