Six tips to help you motivate temporary staff

The best employers we work with are really good at motivating and engaging their temporary staff. They also tend to be the employers that temporary staff are attracted to and want to work with again.

How well temporary staff are treated has a real impact on an organisations reputation as an employer. Let’s face it, temps are as much as part of the local community as full time staff and they share their experiences (good and bad) with people who you might want to recruit in the future.

Six tips that will help you to get the most from temporary staff.

Adopt the right mind-set.

The first thing we notice about employers good at motivating temps is that they adopt a mind-set, across their organisation, that temps are a really important part of the team. It’s important to treat them as if they are permanent staff. Temporary staff are a flexible and often specialist part of a team and provide extra resource when needed. Skills are important but employers also benefit massively if temporary staff are also enthused and energised.

Get them on board.

When hiring permanent staff we all know that a good recruitment process includes a good induction. Don’t skip good ‘on-boarding’ for temporary employees either. A proper welcome and initial training can play a key role in making temps feel valued, more effective and they can also play a part in any hand-over process for a new person coming in. Think about enlisting permanent employees as mentors, they can support temporary staff and also act as your ‘eyes and ears’ day to day.

Make them feel involved.

Help temps to understand your culture and what you do. Communicate regularly and involve them in internal meetings – for any member of the team to feel like their work has value, they must understand how it relates to the overall department and company goals. Don’t take the attitude that they won’t be with you when a project finishes, so why involve them in the planning. If you do, not only will the temp worker lack understanding, but you may miss out on some great idea

Provide Feedback

Let your temp employees know how they are doing! Like any employee, they will appreciate the feedback. This will also help them grow and improve. Because temp workers know they have a limited time at a job, they are usually very eager to implement any suggestions you give them, and you are likely see improvements right away.

Say thank you!

Actively look for things your temporary staff have done well and give them a genuine thank you for something specific. A generalised thank you can feel more like a pat on the head for coming in. When you thank someone for something specific it helps to make them feel good about themselves, their managers and the company. Everyone wants to know when they do a good job and they are more likely to continue with the type of performance you want.

Good people are also more likely to want to work with you again and they send out positive messages to the rest of the world about you as an employer.

Provide benefits.

Benefits packages are now the ‘norm’ for permanent staff because it is recognised they help to motivate people and take care of their wellbeing, traditionally temps have missed out. Whilst it may be difficult to include temporary staff in your company benfefits package, ethical agencies like First Base provide temporary staff with a wide range of similar benefits so that they don’t feel left out.

Employers and candidates tell us that First Base is their first choice for help with their recruitment requirements and their personal career progression. If you would like to know more about how the First Base team could help you, contact us on 01453 755330.

Wellbeing – it’s not just about free fruit!

Wellbeing at work isn’t a new concept but it is certainly on the agenda of many employers we speak to about their recruitment requirements. It’s increasingly important to the candidates who approach us well – many ask us to seek out those employers with a reputation for taking employee health and wellbeing seriously.

Still misunderstood?

According to a group of wellbeing experts in a recent British Safety Council report, there still remains a great deal of uncertainty about what exactly wellbeing is all about. The report ‘Not just free fruit: Wellbeing at Work’ found that employee wellbeing is often ignored or misunderstood. Employers are unsure how to define it, how to improve it, what priority to assign to it and how to measure the success of well-being programmes and interventions. While occupational safety remains a key priority for employers across all sectors, there is growing awareness of the impact wellbeing has on individuals, organisations and society as a whole.

“The link between wellbeing and productivity is undeniable and calculable. It cannot be ignored.” – Lawrence Waterman OBE

The report provides a timely reminder that too often, unlike the highly professional approach to risk assessment and risk control which has yielded improvements in preventing accidents and injuries, wellbeing efforts have been marked by a combination of real enthusiasm and commitment married to a woeful ignorance of what will, sustainably and effectively, make a difference. Well-being at work not only includes traditional health benefits but, crucially, the conditions which characterise the working day: workload, collegiality, autonomy and salary, to name a few.

SME’s risk losing good talent

Whilst there are now many impressive well-being programmes being promoted by larger organisations it seems that some SME’s, whilst suffering the consequences of absenteeism and long term health issues, remain reluctant to provide health and wellbeing benefits.

A survey of 500 SMEs, conducted for BUPA, explains the paradox. While 76% of SME leaders who experienced the long-term sickness absence of a worker declared that it had a ‘significant impact’ on growth, only 46% said that health and wellbeing will be ‘a key consideration’ as they develop their business.

Following the survey Richard Norris, Bupa’s Consumer Director, observed that health and wellbeing ‘should be an integral part of their growth strategy from the start’. He stated: ”If small business owners continue to side line employee wellbeing, they risk losing market share and good talent to more supportive competitors. By supporting the health and wellbeing of their people, leaders are helping to protect the long-term health of their business.” The Federation and Small Businesses and the CIPD support his view. With 5.5m small businesses in the UK, both agree that health and well-being needs to be linked to an employer’s corporate strategy and based closely on the specific needs of the organisation and its people from the outset.

The report concludes with a statement we at First Base wholeheartedly support based on our experience of placing over 13,000 people into work with over 300 employers:

‘Workers are the lifeblood of all businesses, large or small. No company can survive without them. Looking after their well-being is not only the right thing to do, it also make good financial sense.’

You can download the full report here.

Employee engagement: a key tool to grow your business

It is clear from our own experience of placing thousands of individuals into jobs with hundreds of organisations, that employee engagement has a major influence on business success. Today, the challenge is twofold:

Attracting the right people:

UK unemployment rates are at lowest since 1975 at 4%
UK workforce is shrinking at the same time as vacancies are rising
Job seekers are becoming more discerning and engage with employer ‘brands’

Retaining and engaging the right people:

Today’s work force is more fluid and more likely to ‘job hop’ to build their career portfolio
Almost three quarters (73%) of millennials agreed they would be more motivated to work if it was recognised by personalised benefits in addition to salary – the same goes for 65% of Gen X and 57% of baby boomers.

Why does engagement matter?

It is a well established fact that engaged employees drive more business growth. Companies with strong employee engagement rates experience 87% higher staff retention, 17% higher productivity levels, 20% higher sales and 19% increase in revenue.

Engagement goes way beyond a casual dress code. Companies gaining recognition as Best Places to Work For are working hard on many levels to engage their people. According to the Sunday Times Best Small Companies to work, the right things to on focus are:

Personal growth
Giving something back
Remuneration & Reward
Leadership
Benefits
Wellbeing

How First Base helps SME’s with engagement

For SME’s, the challenges of engaging and retaining talent can be exacerbated by limited resources, cost pressures, competition and lack of specific knowledge of HR and legal matters. Offering a package of perks, particularly to part time and temporray staff, can be a challenge.

To help our SME clients, First Base took a cold hard look at what is working regarding employee engagement around the world and came across a model that has been successful in the US for over 25 years.

The PEO (Professional Employment Organisation) model, which has recently been adapted to UK needs by our payroll partner, Hive360, is based on ‘co-employment’ and group buying power. In America, where 3.4mi workers are employed through this model, companies using PEO grow up to 9% faster, have up to 14% less staff turnover, are 50% less likely to go out of business and reduce admin costs significantly per employee.

Through our partnership with Hive 360, we offer our temporary staff a pay & perks portal which gives them access to services such as 24h NHS approved telephone GP service, specialised phone counselling, health and wellbeing advice and thousands of shopping and lifestyle discounts. Through the portal they also receive payslips in a GDPR compliant way and be able to see their pensions performance in real time. This adds value to our relationship with temporary staff and in turn helps the employers we work with.

(This blog was adapted from an article provided by our payroll partner, Hive 360).