The American workforce is constantly changing, as companies reassess their needs and resources, as different generations enter and leave the workforce, and different economic conditions change employment patterns.
More recently, temporary workers have become a much more significant and integral part of the workforce, as companies attempt to control their expenses. In many places, human resources is not involved with the contingent workforce, but as temporary staffing has become more important, a number of HR experts are saying that human resources needs to play a larger role.
They see the importance of knowing about these workers – how they are hired, managed, and terminated. If a company does not keep track of its temporary workforce, it may find itself with legal and financial problems down the road.
For example, one company that began tracking its contingent workforce found that its temporary staff was the second largest expense, significantly higher than they had thought.
At some companies, a procurement division hires contingent staff, but at others, neither procurement nor human resources works with temporary workers.
But according to some human resource people, HR definitely should be involved in managing contingent staff if they are a regular and important part of an organization’s workforce. If you don’t know what’s going on with these workers, there is no way you can manage them effectively.
If for example a contingent employee has been effective in his or her job and has certain skills that the company needs, a manager may want to hire the person full time.
A big dilemma is that different departments do not communicate with each other about the temporary staffing situation. Procurement is only concerned about paying the these workers. It doesn’t really worry about their performance or the kinds of skills they have. So human resources needs to take the initiative and communicate with procurement to get information about the workers.
Without this kind of oversight, contingent staffing becomes a stealth expense to a company. In fact, companies can lose track of how many temporary staff are working at the organization.
With some controls over the contingent staff, managers on their own might use different staffing agencies, and so this prevents a company from negotiating with an agency for a better price, or from making price comparisons.
So companies need to evaluate their use of contingent workers and how extensive it is. Then, human resources can work with other departments to set up a process for handling these workers.
When your company needs temporary, temporary-to-hire or direct-hire workers in the Anchorage area, send a message to the Opti Staffing Group. We would love to discuss how we can help your company with its contingent staffing needs