Since Christmas the number of agency temporary workers in contact centres has been increasing. The majority of these being for temporary to permanent resourcing solutions.
Why? For a variety of reasons including;
- A way to fill immediate resourcing gaps without obligated long-term commitment
- To help cover a peak period with an opportunity to transfer the talent later down the line in to permanent vacancies if their performance and cultural fit has been assessed as
- To speed up the recruitment process and the pre-start compliance, and to improve the in-work engagement by outsourcing to external experts
- To help resource unplanned volume requirements that internal recruitment teams cannot fulfill
- To trial the temporary candidate market to compare its success in productivity, attendance and tenure against permanent populations
There are of course pros and cons to every recruitment strategy, but the headlines for temporary recruitment solutions in contact centres are;
Pros
- Cost; you only pay for the hours worked avoiding long term salary commitments and absence costs.
- Payroll process savings; The agency pays the wages and invoices weekly for the cost
- Fast Scaling; agency teams like Red have large, agile and expert teams ready to move to meet demand – no matter what the number or timescale. Used to working urgently and outside of normal office hours to fulfill client needs to timescales
- Flexibility; temporary workers recruited and managed by agencies that are experienced at managing contact centre temps are showing above average attendance and tenure in the contact centre industry. They are committed and high quality resource that is flexible to changing business needs and customer demand
Cons
- Collaboration challanges; Temps in contact centres are at their best when they feel part of the team and not a separate population. In contact centres they can be doing the same role as their permanent counterparts or can be staffing separate teams such as triage but they need to feel part of the whole for best results.
- Communication; Temps need regular and two way communication, the quality of communication is what makes a great, rather than just a suitable Agency partner
My advice?
Permanent employees and hires are the backbone of our industry but there are over 40,000 temporary workers working in the industry on any one day. In this continuing unpredictable and volatile economic, customer and labour market climate, temporary workers offer contact centres a route to move forwards confidently and in a high quality way but with flexible cost structures. There are many industry case studies of success and some of failure, so best advice is to make sure the process is well thought out, relevant to the current market conditions and worker behaviours, and the solution is delivered by experts.
Of course, please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you would like to discuss temporary workers for your business.
Katy Forsythe
