Contingent Staff and Your HR Department
Posted July 11th, 2011
A company’s human resources department has a lot on its plate, with handling the hiring, training, pay and benefits of all of the employees in the workplace. But as companies use contingent workers on a more regular basis, some human resources people believe that HR should oversee them as well.
They see the importance of knowing about these workers – how they are hired, managed and terminated. If a company does not keep track of its temporary workforce, it may find itself with legal and financial problems down the road.
For example, Microsoft paid almost $100 million to settle a legal action against its longstanding temporary workforce, people who worked for years at Microsoft as temporary employees, supposedly so the company would not have to pay them benefits.
Another company that began tracking its temporary workforce found that its temporary staff was the second largest expense, significantly higher than the company had thought.
In some companies, a procurement division hires temporary staff, but in some companies neither procurement nor human resources works with temporaries. In other companies, the human resources department does not want to work with the temporary staff.
But according to some staffing experts, HR definitely should be involved in managing temporary staff if they are a regular and important part of an organization’s workforce. If you don’t know what’s going on with your temporary staff, there is no way you can manage them effectively.
If, for example, a contingent worker has been effective in his or her job and has certain skills that the company needs, a manager may want to hire the person full time.
A big dilemma is that different departments do not communicate with each other about the temporary staffing situation. Procurement is only concerned about paying the staffing service. It doesn’t really worry about the temporary workers’ performance or the kinds of skills they have. So the human resources department needs to take the initiative and communicate with procurement to get information about the workers.
Without this kind of oversight, temporary staffing becomes a stealth expense to a company. In fact, companies can lose track of how many temporary staff are working at the organization.
With some controls over the contigent staff, managers on their own might use different temporary agencies, and so this prevents a company from negotiating with staffing service for a better price, or from making price comparisons.
So companies need to evaluate their use of contingent workers The human resources department can then work with other departments to set up a process for handling these workers.
When you’re looking to save on your San Francisco company’s payroll costs, contact Bayside Solutions. We can source and hire (on our payroll) some of the best Bay Area employees for temporary, temp-to-hire and direct hire positions. We look forward to helping your company run smoothly and well within your budget.
