Anyone who talks about skilled workers and workers today quickly lands on the subject of temporary employment. Many companies use personnel service providers because it is an obvious solution given the shortage of skilled workers, time pressure and limited resources. That’s not a bad thing at first, it’s part of everyday life in HR and recruiting. Temporary work shortens the path to filling because external partners search, select and suggest suitable profiles. However, one dimension that is crucial for long-term employee loyalty and employer branding is often ignored: the actual employer identity.
The convenient shortcut in recruiting
In practice, temporary work is seen primarily as a pragmatic instrument. There is a need, the service provider has candidates, the company is planning to use them. Within the company, it’s easy to get the feeling that recruiting has been elegantly outsourced and that you can concentrate on operational issues. Qualifications, availability and hourly rates are the focus. The question of how people actually experience the operation – leadership, collaboration, onboarding or team climate – usually only plays a secondary role. If someone leaves after a short time, the service provider will provide a replacement. Everything goes on, almost as usual. It is rarely questioned why the person does not want to continue the collaboration despite the existing takeover offer.
Temporary work and corporate culture
Particularly from an employer branding perspective, temporary workers are one of the most exciting target groups of all. You don’t experience the communicated employer brand – but rather the actual employer identity. And they get to know different companies and teams in a short time. Unlike many permanent employees, they have direct comparison values. You experience different leadership styles, team cultures and working methods and therefore develop an exceptionally high sensitivity for good and bad employers. This experience gives them an excellent ability to differentiate between where they like to work and where they don’t.
Permanent employees often have a long history with their employer, established relationships and shared experiences. This is valuable and an important part of loyalty and retention. Temporary workers generally have fewer of these factors and are more oriented towards what the current operation actually feels like. Anyone who consciously rejects a takeover offer after a successful assignment provides one of the most honest feedback a company can receive about its own quality as an employer. Because this decision is rarely random. In turn, it shows whether people experience the company as a place where they can feel comfortable in the long term. Temporary workers are therefore not a marginal group in employer branding. They are his most honest auditors.
When fluctuation does not appear as a warning signal
The real problem, however, is not that people leave. The problem arises when these departures are hardly perceived as a warning signal within the company. When it comes to permanent employees, companies usually keep an eye on their key figures. You see terminations, evaluate exit interviews and observe the fluctuation rate per area and location. At the latest when patterns emerge, the question arises as to what needs to change in leadership or work organization.
When using temporary staff, the company often only notices that someone is leaving and someone new is coming. The formal exits take place via the service provider and not in your own system. This means there are no spikes in your own termination statistics or a wave of documented reasons for leaving that could be evaluated internally. Team members get used to this coming and going. It has become normal for someone new to appear regularly. This creates a dangerous blind flight: a culture problem is treated as a recruiting problem.
Corporate culture as a cost item
When temporary work is used in this way, the perspective on the problem shifts. What would actually be an indication of weaknesses in corporate culture, leadership or collaboration appears in everyday life primarily as an issue of costs and capacities. More staff are requested through the service provider, assignments are extended and new profiles are sought. To the outside world, this looks like a professionally managed personnel service, but the actual question of why people don’t stay remains unanswered.
From the company’s perspective, this looks like a professionally managed external recruiting solution. However, it remains unclear in depth why people do not want to stay and reject takeover offers. A cultural issue thus becomes a question of budget and service volume. This poses risks because it obscures the causes.
Temporary workers move in networks like permanent employees, talk to colleagues and talk about other companies where they have worked. They use rating portals and platforms on which they rate employers and companies they use. Personnel service providers often have a surprisingly precise picture of which companies are considered good places to work and which are not. They know where people like to stay, where takeovers work and where operations regularly fail. However, this knowledge is rarely used systematically.
Consciously use temporary work for employer branding
Temporary work does not have to become a blind flight in employer branding. Companies can consciously use them to learn more about their own corporate culture. One approach is to view takeover rates and deployment cancellations as more than just metrics in the recruiting funnel. Exactly these key figures should not only be recruiting KPIs, but also culture and leadership key figures. In which areas and for which positions are takeover offers often accepted and where not. Where are there a noticeable number of changes?
In addition, structured feedback loops with service providers and with temporary staff themselves help. Short conversations after an assignment or after a rejected takeover are not an additional administrative burden, but an opportunity to find out first-hand how the company was experienced. Anyone who takes this feedback seriously will receive concrete starting points for leadership, communication and work organization.
It is also important not to treat temporary staff as a marginal group in daily cultural work. Onboarding, integration into the team, access to information, appreciation and clear communication shape perceptions just as they do for permanent employees. Employer branding doesn’t end with the core workforce. Employer branding begins wherever people experience an employer. Regardless of whether you are an intern, applicant, freelancer or temporary worker.
Temporary work as an opportunity for smart companies
Temporary work remains an important instrument in the recruiting mix. It is an important component, especially in challenging labor markets, in order to be able to react flexibly to needs. Smart companies use them not only to quickly fill positions, but also as a way to better understand their own employer quality.
They don’t see temporary staff’s decisions to stay or leave as an annoying fluctuation, but rather as valuable feedback on their own corporate culture. Anyone who perceives these signals and learns from them reduces bad appointments, increases temporary employment and gains an honest view of how the company is really experienced. Perhaps the greatest potential of temporary employment does not lie in filling positions more quickly. But rather to give companies an unobstructed view of their own employer identity.
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