5 top tips for managing temporary labour

I recently attended a meeting with a company that have a large reliance on temporary labour, and were spending in excess of £10m per annum across this category.

What I found amazing was that this particular company thought the best way to solve this problem, was to stop using temporary staff all together. A strategy that had quite a few flaws and was unlikely to work.Clearly, as a business, they had a heavy reliance on the use of temporary workers and asking them to simply down tools and stop working would cause a number of issues both in the short and long term.

So as a result, here are my top 5 tips for managing agency labour numbers without putting a total ban on the use of them:

1) Understand exactly how much you are spending, where and with whom

2) Challenge the use of temporary workers at point of hire. Do you already have someone within the business that can provide that skill on a short or long term basis?

3) Manage the term of assignment ie do not let it just roll and roll

4) Manage the pay and charge rates not one or the other to avoid inflated pay and or charge rates

5) Adopt a central approach – regional frameworks offer some control but not 100% as the terms and conditions are potentially different

It is not unheard of in this day and age for a company to rely on the use of a large temporary workforce. There are many sectors in the UK that are suffering because of the skills shortage that we have as a nation and the use of temporary labour is more often than not the only choice that a company has.

A temporary workforce that is well managed, compliant and controlled can offer great flexibility and value for money.

An unmanaged temporary workforce is likely to have poor visibility or control of exactly where you are spending money and who with, as well as potential compliance risks.

If it does get to the point where you realise you are spending too much money on temporary labour then ask yourself a couple of questions:

1) Who are we spending with?

2) Is it necessary?

3) What is our strategy moving forward to manage/control this?

For those who do have a large spend on temporary workers an RPO solution could be the next natural step in taking control of this area of the business.

An RPO provider can offer visibility, compliance, supplier management along with a number of improved efficiencies while driving cost savings.

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