“Is using a staffing agency more cost-effective than full time employees?”

10.27.16 | Looking to Hire

Finding the right people for the right job is a challenge for many small businesses. Between posting the job, interviewing and selecting the right candidate, a lot can potentially go wrong. But if you haven’t considered using a staffing agency, then maybe you should.

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What you might not know, is that there are quite a few benefits to hiring through a staffing agency, other than filling a gap. Here are the top reasons why you should use a staffing agency instead of exclusively hiring full-time employees.

Maximize productivity

If you’re like many small businesses, your employees are often wearing many hats to get things done. Employees see where someone needs to pick up the slack and step in even if it’s outside of their job description. However, this comes at the cost of them not focusing all of their energy on doing what they’re best at. By using temporary workers, you’ll be able to fill in some of those gaps, letting your full-time employees focus on the most critical work. If you have any issues that are “low hanging fruit” at your office that can make a significant impact in improving productivity, temps are a perfect solution.

Reduce benefit spending

One of the most significant expenditures for small businesses are benefits for full-time employees. The number of employment laws has gone from just two in the year 1900 to over two thousand in the present day. Employers now need to deal with regulations such as the Affordable Care Act, workers’ comp, health insurance and paid sick leave. With these regulations only increasing, temp workers are making more and more sense for businesses. You’ll be able to get good workers who are eager to prove themselves to earn a full-time position potentially, but avoid having to pay for their benefits until you’re sure it’s a good long-term fit or the project is complete.

Provide staffing flexibility

Once a full-time employee has been hired, it’s tough to adjust their role, hours or pay if staffing needs change. If you decide to let go of someone, you’re losing all the time and money you invested in recruiting, interviewing, hiring and training that person. But by using a staffing agency, you’ll be able to bring people on or scale them back quickly and without the high cost associated with full-time employee turnover. If you have a three-month Excel project, for example, you can work with a staffing agency to bring the right person on for that project without going through an entire hiring cycle.

Decrease recruitment costs

One of the great things about temp workers is that you can now evaluate future employees without any long-term commitment. If you do find a temporary worker that would be an excellent fit for your organization, you can always look into the possibility of hiring them full time. < br>< br>This decreases your recruiting costs because qualified candidates are coming to you, instead of vice-versa. A common recruiting effort requires time and money to post the job, screen applications, conduct interviews and onboarding. You’ll also have some real-world observational proof as to whether the temp worker would succeed in a full-time role.

So if your recruiting efforts have hit a snag, using a staffing agency is an approach you might want to consider. Aside from getting the work done, you’ll be able to save some cash and build a pipeline of potential future full-timers with whom you’re already comfortable.