Temps, 1 out of every 20 is decent

A2Z said:
This.

Sounds like you need to stop recruiting every temp that applies and actually have a proper hiring process to weed out the ones that are most likely to not perform.

If 1 out of 20 is decent then whoever decided to give them the job is quite simply rubbish at recruiting.
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Part of the point of temp work like this (in many businesses especially warehouse, etc.) is avoiding going through too much time on the hiring process - often with group interviews, etc. 10 years ago you might hire say a group of 20 and over half of them wouldn't be a total waste of space - sadly these days that is often much less of a story.

Fubsy said:
Whenever I've done temping I was treated like ****. If I'd carried on doing it I would have ended up doing the absolute minimum as the norm, luckily my effort paid off and I was recommended for a perm role and haven't had to do it again.
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This does have something to do with it - especially I wouldn't blame anyone for not doing more than the basics if hired on minimum wage with little else incentive wise - but more of the places I've worked for have had reasonable managers and conditions than haven't.
 
Maybe it's because temporary work is not conducive to finding good workers? they've probably been kicked to the kerb so many times when the work has run dry that they've stopped working hard.

How come you have to wait 3 months to give the good ones a job? shouldn't you be trying to keep them happy/loyal if they're that hard to come by?
 
mmj_uk said:
How come you have to wait 3 months to give the good ones a job? shouldn't you be trying to keep them happy/loyal if they're that hard to come by?
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When I did temp/agency work before it was quite often 3 months in the contract between my agency and the company I was provided to as a temp worker in case they wanted to make me permanent. Don't know exactly why it was exactly 3 months though.
 
Something to do with poaching staff.
If you could hire good staff after 3 days temp offices would just be a free recruiter service, instead of the parasitic, middleman, leech scum that they are.
 
mmj_uk said:
Maybe it's because temporary work is not conducive to finding good workers? they've probably been kicked to the kerb so many times when the work has run dry that they've stopped working hard.

How come you have to wait 3 months to give the good ones a job? shouldn't you be trying to keep them happy/loyal if they're that hard to come by?
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The have to do 500 and sonething hours before we can take them from the agency. So the agency gets their slice of the pie.
 
Would it not be better to employ them and vet them yourselves, the cost and time of constantly training people must be through the roof and very unproductive
 
Tbh this is the downside of hiring temps.

You are bringing somebody on on the understanding that they have no job security & that you can get rid of them at a moments notice. This is because I'd guess that your company can't offer a long term secure position & wants to be able to get rid of people if needed.

It's hardly the best starting point to get committed employees. More often than not the best potential candidates have ignored your adverts & avoided temping like the plague it often is.

I did temping for a few years out of college & the kind of work you're expected to do, the poor pay, having zero job security meant that as soon as I had a little experience I never went back & moved onto permanent jobs instead.
 
It all depends on which production lines are running and which products we are running and then if they are doing 12 hour shifts or 8. This is what drives the demand for temps. Some days we need 5 on a line other days its 2.
 
1 in 20 is far to sensationalist, then again I'm assuming this is office related work. Temps are often treated quite badly in the workplace by people who aren't qualified to manage or have no idea what to do with them.

My point being, this stuff goes both ways and isn't a one way street.
 
Plus this is in the USA where basically joe average, working in a factory does 50-70 hours a week. And due to the union contract they can be drafted to work 4 hours overtime at the end of their shift with 40 mins notice.
 
I find laziness to be like a disease. If some people in a team are lazy, the others don't want to do all the work for them. So they decide to do less work to match the lazy ones. I've even been guilty of doing it. I've worked with people (European construction workers) who get paid twice as much as me, but want to do the bare minimum. I don't feel it's right that I should do most of the work for half of the pay and so I just don't. As someone else mentioned, I think the reason some Brits are lazy (and it is only some), is because unlike their foreign counterparts, they don't have to worry about employment so much. I find also that it's not about what you know. It's about who you know. With the right connections, you can be a fairly lazy worker but never be unemployed.
 
Kids are becoming more entitled by the day, often combined with poor work ethic, it took us 6 months to fill a simple assistant role last year. The temps being sent by the agency were shocking, we ended up finding someone ourselves. But they all have degrees, perhaps there is a connection?
 
.Lethal said:
1 in 20 is far to sensationalist, then again I'm assuming this is office related work. Temps are often treated quite badly in the workplace by people who aren't qualified to manage or have no idea what to do with them.

My point being, this stuff goes both ways and isn't a one way street.
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Personally I'm talking about across the board including office and warehouse, etc. where I work atleast temps generally are treated OK - not been the case everywhere I've worked. I don't think 1 in 20 is that sensationalist unfortunately.

elmarko said:
Tbh this is the downside of hiring temps.

You are bringing somebody on on the understanding that they have no job security & that you can get rid of them at a moments notice. This is because I'd guess that your company can't offer a long term secure position & wants to be able to get rid of people if needed.

It's hardly the best starting point to get committed employees. More often than not the best potential candidates have ignored your adverts & avoided temping like the plague it often is.

I did temping for a few years out of college & the kind of work you're expected to do, the poor pay, having zero job security meant that as soon as I had a little experience I never went back & moved onto permanent jobs instead.
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It never used to be as bad as it is now - both of the last two places I've worked have a number of permanent positions to fill longer term but generally hire say 30 temps when we get a spike in workload i.e. around Christmas and then keep on the best 5-7 or so after 3 months - by which time around 10 have gone their own way anyhow.

EDIT: One thing that has changed which probably doesn't help much - when I was working in the warehouse for Screwfix as a student 20 odd years ago the majority of weekday temporary positions were around 40 hours a week and then some weekend like 16-20 hours, etc. that a lot of students did - these days 15-20 hours is much more normal as a contract even if you are working 30 odd hour weeks much of the time and the only truly "fulltime" contracts are supervisors and upwards.
 
elmarko said:
Tbh this is the downside of hiring temps.

You are bringing somebody on on the understanding that they have no job security & that you can get rid of them at a moments notice. This is because I'd guess that your company can't offer a long term secure position & wants to be able to get rid of people if needed.

It's hardly the best starting point to get committed employees. More often than not the best potential candidates have ignored your adverts & avoided temping like the plague it often is.

I did temping for a few years out of college & the kind of work you're expected to do, the poor pay, having zero job security meant that as soon as I had a little experience I never went back & moved onto permanent jobs instead.
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Some wise words here.

Pay peanuts, get monkeys is the phrase that springs to mind here.

Either pay more, or recruit for perms and you're unlikely to be changing temps every other week.
 
Semple said:
Some wise words here.

Pay peanuts, get monkeys is the phrase that springs to mind here.

Either pay more, or recruit for perms and you're unlikely to be changing temps every other week.
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This is kind of missing the point though - a lot of temporary hiring is done this way for a reason - especially for things like peak time demand it isn't unusual to bulk hire temps and then keep on the better ones (most of which will understand this on hiring) but there has been a marked decline in quality lately.
 
Rroff said:
This is kind of missing the point though - a lot of temporary hiring is done this way for a reason - especially for things like peak time demand it isn't unusual to bulk hire temps and then keep on the better ones (most of which will understand this on hiring) but there has been a marked decline in quality lately.
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Yeah i see your point.

Fund an AI program and you'll never need to recruit a temp worker again (and you can fire your permanent staff :p)
 
LabR@t said:
Kids are becoming more entitled by the day, often combined with poor work ethic, it took us 6 months to fill a simple assistant role last year. The temps being sent by the agency were shocking, we ended up finding someone ourselves. But they all have degrees, perhaps there is a connection?
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Shock as someone who spent years doing something highly competitive feels entitled to a better job horror.

Not all degrees are equitable, but this is boorish.
 
StriderX said:
Shock as someone who spent years doing something highly competitive feels entitled to a better job horror.

Not all degrees are equitable, but this is boorish.
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I personally would expect someone with a degree to be above average in terms of intelligence and ability, especially for the jobs I recruit for, but I realised that having a degree doesn't mean all that.
I have interviewed several people with degrees and also employed a couple and they were no better than people with no further education. In fact in some cases much worse.

What i am trying to say is that having a degree should not automatically entitle you to a better job.
 
Just because they are a temp doesn't mean you can't at least vet them or review the CV.

Hell, depending on the position, it's quite likely we'll want to interview or at least meet them first.

If you're going in blind what do you expect...
 
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