As organizations opt for a blended workforce, they must find ways to ensure temporary workers feel at home.
The blended workforce offers many benefits for businesses: increased flexibility, financial efficiency and access to specific skills without long-term commitment. But realizing these benefits requires a pool of readily available talent. Here are nine ways to make agency workers feel welcome:
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First impressions count
The best way to ensure agency workers want to keep working with you is by delivering an exceptional employee experience. And that starts on the very first day they enter your organization.
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Make choosing shifts easy
The employee experience starts before an agency worker has met a single member of your staff, because they first have to book a shift. This process can be frustrating or seamless, depending on the system you implement.
Focus on simplicity: a self-serve model is ideal for most temporary workers. Allow them to scan, choose and book without having to interact with anyone. But also make sure there is support available, if they have any concerns.
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Showcase your culture online
Your employee brand is also relevant to the initial experience, as temporary workers will have preconceptions based on their prior exposure to your business. Workers today research employers before taking a gig. Flex’s research shows that 58.6% use Indeed.com to assess an employer before working with them. Others consult Google Reviews (17.5%); LinkedIn (12.8%); and Glassdoor (7.5%).
Businesses should provide clear information about what they do, as well as plenty of positive testimonials to ensure new agency workers enter their first shift with a positive expectation.
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Make starting simple
Temporary workers generally want a straightforward experience: they’re not interested in paperwork or long interview processes. So site managers and HR need to be prepared to make it easier for them to arrive onsite and get working.
Streamlining and putting into place strong onboarding processes will help this. If there is a way to speed this up – whether through pre-existing compliance training or reducing the amount of information workers need to absorb – that will go a long way to improve the overall temp worker experience.
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Make personal introductions
Entering a new organization can be intimidating for temporary workers, and it is your job to ensure they feel safe and welcome. But 12.6% of temps tell Flex that their employers don’t provide basic information – such as introductions to other staff members.
The small effort it takes to make personal introductions and field workers’ questions on the first day can have an outsized impact on their decision to work with you again. It also provides an opportunity to communicate some vital factors which will incentivize loyalty.
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Meet pay expectations
Pay is the number one reason people take on temporary work, and under-compensating them is the single easiest way to alienate a temporary employee – especially when they have multiple employer options.
Matching industry averages should be a given. But those that want to make a serious impact on their new temporary workers can make it clear during their introduction that the company rewards loyalty, offering increased compensation after a certain number of shifts or time period.
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Offer consistent work
Another vital factor to address is shift consistency and the availability of work. Temps want to know they can rely on a given employer for plenty of work; 33.4% say employers are not consistent with their shift offering.
It’s important to strike a balance here: reassure workers that you will provide a consistent flow of work, but don’t create unrealistic or otherwise false expectations. It is better to be honest about how frequently you’ll be able to provide work than to get workers’ hopes up and only to disappoint them.
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Provide support for wellbeing
By the very nature of their situation, temporary workers are always liable to feel disposable. Nearly 30% of temps feel the companies they work for don’t care about their wellbeing, while nearly half report “sometimes” feeling safe in their working environments.
Ensure there is plenty of support available throughout the first shift. This will not only ensure your temps feel taken care of; it will give them a good sense of how much you value their wellbeing and what level of support they can expect in the future.
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Empowered employees come back for more
While all of these tips are important, the underlying principle is the same for all of them: treating temporary workers right is all about understanding their needs. And what do they need? To be treated with the respect you give full-time employees.
That is the essence of the blended workforce: temps matter just as much as full-timers, and deserve all of the flexibility, autonomy, transparency and compensation you offer core workers.
Looking to integrate temporary workers into your workforce further? Motivate and engage staff with the recommendations from our latest webinar. We even had a Flexer offer their perspective. Watch the webinar here.
