Temporary workers play an important role in the construction industry.  Are they right for your project? Check out these pros and cons of hiring temporary labour.

Hire help as you need it

With all businesses there are slow times, steady times and then those times when business is booming.

The most economical way to cater for these unpredictable fluctuations is to employ skeleton permanent staff and then hire the remaining help as you need it.

Hiring temporary labour enables your business to adjust more easily and quickly to workload fluctuations.

You can bring in temporary staff to cover employee absences (sick, vacation, sudden departure) and unexpected demands (special projects, peak periods).

Can evaluate worker without commitment

It is hard to tell by a resume how good a worker really is, and hiring the wrong employee can be a costly mistake.

The great thing about hiring temporary staff is that you can hire a labourer for a short time and later down the track offer them a full-time position when you are certain that they suit your business.

Hiring temporary labour is an excellent and cost-efficient way to recruit and test the abilities of new workers before signing them on full-time.

The beauty about temporary labour is that if for some reason you are unsatisfied with the labour, all you need do is contact the agency and they will take care of the rest.

Can save time and money

When you use the services of an agency, the employee is the responsibility of them and not you. Therefore you save money and time because you don’t have the burden of recruiting and screening future employees.

Hiring temporary labour also saves you paying all the extra benefits, such as annual leave, sick pay etc.

Overall it is generally much more cost-efficient to hire temporary labour, however for jobs that are expected to last six months or longer you may want to consider hiring a full-time employee, for a full time employee is much more likely to stick around for the entire length of the project as opposed to a temp.

Offers specialised skills

Temporary labour can be introduced into your business to help tackle those critical one-time projects that are limited in time and scope.   In the construction industry, recent years have seen a dramatic growth and acceptance of hiring labourers on a temporary basis.

Training Needs

Every time a temp worker starts a new work assignment – no matter how skilled or unskilled – some type of training needs to be undertaken before they can commence their work.

Generally this will be a worksite introduction, however for more techniqual worksites and projects it could be much more.

However if you have a full-time safety officer on-board, you could leave this in their hands, and chances are it will still cost you considerably less than if you were to hire full time staff.

Overall being prepared and organised is the key to tackling this minor issue.

The question of reliability

Temporary workers can be very transient, moving from one project to another. The question then arises if they are less reliable than their permanent employee counterparts.

However it has been proven that temporary labour often is more productive. They haven’t had the time to get too familiar with the workplace, which is often the root of laziness and unmotivation.

Also temporary labour generally choose when they are available to work, this creates for them a more idyllic work/life balance which results in them being more motivated when they come to work.