As a company that recruits across the globe, we always speak with top employers across the energy sector about their hiring practices and how the market is changing.
According to data from the American Staffing Association, around 12.7 million people were hired by staffing companies in the last year, with many more permanent employees also exploring the potential flexibility that comes with a temporary role.
For employers, this opens up both challenges and opportunities. Fewer professionals looking for permanent roles obviously makes recruiting more difficult, but it does mean there’s plenty of potential entering the interim market.
With this in mind, we’re exploring why many more employers are hiring temporary staff and how they’re becoming increasingly popular in an energy sector witnessing rapid expansion.
Why Hire Temporary Staff?
Below is a breakdown of the various benefits that temporary staff offer and why it might be time to start hiring interim staff:
Temporary staff provide more flexibility
It’s the most cited reason for hiring temporary staff because it’s true – they provide a huge amount of flexibility. Think about it like this – temporary hires are often chosen based on their specific expertise, which they can implement when and wherever it’s needed. They don’t require training, and in most cases, they’re used to working short-term assignments, so there’s not as much need for onboarding.
This is especially useful in energy sectors such as Biogas, because they often run on a project-by-project basis, where the need for construction, operation and maintenance expertise differs as new schemes are developed and implemented.
Temporary staff bring new expertise
As previously mentioned, temporary staff often bring with them a broad range of expertise that you might not currently have in the team. The majority of temporary staff work interim or contract roles out of choice, meaning they develop skills from working across a variety of industries, functions and organisations, allowing them to quickly integrate and adapt to your business.
This is really useful if you’re looking to implement new best practices, optimise your current operations or simply bring a new perspective to your business.
At the same time, you may utilise temporary staff to target specific knowledge gaps in your team, which would usually cost a significant amount of time and resources to train.
Browse Our All New Resources
Temporary staff are cost-effective
Speaking of cost, it’s well established that temporary staff are a great way to cover challenging periods or avoid disruption without having to invest a significant amount of money.
Hiring a permanent employee doesn’t just mean spending money on their salary, it means paying for benefits, training costs, legal costs, administrative costs and potentially even more if it ends up not working out.
Hiring a temporary employee completely negates the majority of these factors, especially if there’s a clearly defined project brief and no need for significant onboarding.
This means temporary staff are nearly always exceptionally cost-effective, particularly if you’re looking for instant and specialised support during challenging periods, such as a restructuring.
4. Temporary staff minimise disruption
One of the most painful experiences for a business is going through a transitional period – whether that’s scaling up, restructuring or taking on a new project – and facing problems due to staff numbers.
These periods are often extremely complex, time-consuming and resource-intensive, which can bring with it a whole array of new problems as time goes on.
Temporary staff often mitigate the difficulties you’d usually experience during these times, providing the valuable manpower and insights you need to minimise disruption. Any temporary professional worth their salt should be able to adapt to a new environment and offer solid contributions, regardless of what is needed.