3 Reasons To Use A Professional Staffing Agency For Seasonal Projects

woman being interviewed by 2 other women

It may be tempting to “do it yourself” when a special project or seasonal ramp-up is bearing down on your hiring teams. Is it really worth the time it takes to meet with a professional staffing company and the growing pains that occur as you transfer ownership of the employee screening and intake for a time-sensitive project?

We’ve identified three key ways your organization can benefit from using a staffing company for seasonal projects:

1. QUICKLY ONBOARD SHORT-TERM STAFF WITH THE RIGHT EXPERIENCE

Low unemployment rates mean skilled and experienced people don’t stay unemployed for long. If you hope to capture the talent you need for seasonal projects, you need to quickly attract, screen, and onboard those people to complete your seasonal team. This is particularly true when you have a large project and a finite period of time to get everyone set-up and functional.

A professional staffing company can save your hiring team time and money by giving you access to the hundreds of screened and interviewed candidates in their database and network. These candidates have already been carefully selected from thousands of applicants with similar backgrounds who meet the agency’s criteria for professionalism, skills, training, and experience. In many instances, this means that skills testing and other forms of employment screening have already been initiated or even completed.

Accessing this pool of candidates will free up both your staffing company partner to focus on complementary recruiting campaigns for your project, and your onsite hiring team to zero-in on thorough onboarding practices to ensure assimilation and retention of seasonal project temporary staff.

2. THE AGENCY HANDLES THE PAYROLL ADMIN FOR THESE EMPLOYEES

Reconciling and processing payroll for hundreds of seasonal employees can put a wrench in the works for payroll teams who have to up-cycle quickly. Accuracy and timeliness of pay for all employees is essential to the sense of trust and loyalty that an employee has for their workplace and supervisors – especially for temporary employees who often don’t get to access the perks available to full-time associates.  

A professional staffing agency should have the technology to take on payroll responsibilities for seasonal staff with minimal input or effort from your own payroll department.

For example, ABL Careers uses a back-office system that helps ensure compliance is met in all aspects of payroll legislation and the  Employment Standards Act, while handling all payroll administration from direct deposits and pay stubs to T4s, ROEs, employee deductions, government remittances, and more. (Learn more about our relationship with The Staffing Edge and how their technology and expertise benefit our customers.)

ABL Careers also offers the option of using an onsite time-clock service, which automatically tracks seasonal employee hours and is parsed into our proprietary payroll and billing system. This system consists of a tablet computer (think iPad or Samsung tablet) mounted in a protective case in the employee lunchroom or other area that you designate. It operates by sending timestamps through your existing Wi-Fi signal.

This system allows us to have instant access to which employees have arrived for work that day, so you have the additional benefit of not needing to field “arrival confirmation calls” from your staffing agency partner at the start of every shift. When appropriate, this also allows the staffing agency to begin working on dispatching back-up/fill-in staff in the event of employee cancellations/absences.

There are also more traditional time-keeping options (like sign-in sheets or timesheets authorized and submitted by your onsite supervisors via email or fax), and your staffing agency should work with your company to make sure that whichever option is selected is working as smoothly and conveniently as possible for your teams.

3. HAVE A POOL OF TRAINED INDIVIDUALS AVAILABLE FOR LONG-TERM WORK AFTER THE BUSY SEASON

When your seasonal projects meet your customers’ needs, this can result in opportunities for your company to expand and become even better positioned to serve your customers next season. When your seasonal workload winds down after a successful project, you’re in the best position to identify the star players in your seasonal workforce who can bring value to your organization year-round.

When our recruiting team at ABL Careers meets with temporary candidates, we carefully probe on the employee’s availability for short-term or ongoing work, and their immediate and long-term goals. This helps us identify seasonal workers who have the potential for hire at the end of a successful seasonal ramp-up.

In addition, ABL Careers maintains regular communication with our temporary staff so we can stay abreast of their circumstances and plans for the future, even while they are on an active assignment at your company. As such, we are in a good position to help you identify employees who you’ll want to re-call next season, and retain your best candidates for potential full-time offers at the end of the busy season.

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