Your Time Clock Solution Can Help Temporary Hires Succeed

Across dozens of industries, temporary and seasonal workers play pivotal roles when it comes to finalizing projects, and fulfilling seasonal demands. For example:

• Every year, large and small retailers count on temporary workers to help fill gaps during the holiday shopping season.
• The size and scope of construction and landscape crews grow when the weather warms up, and multiple projects come into full swing.

Professional services organizations such as CPA firms will pad their rosters ahead of tax season.

How Do Your Temporary Workers Track Time?

Regardless of your industry, or the time of year, you might need temporary workers because:

• You’re scaling for growth
• You need to expand your employee roster quickly
• You want to add employees to avoid having to pay overtime hours
• You’re worried about burning out your current employees
• You plan to hire a new full-time employee, but you want to start them on temporary basis

Whenever you add a temporary worker to your roster, you want them to be able to jump into your workflow as seamlessly as possible. What you don’t want is for them to get bogged down trying to figure out tools, processes, and procedures—including the way they track time.

With the right automated time clock, such as those from Icon Time’s TotalPass suite, you can help simplify the way workers track time across projects, departments, job types, and much more.

Hiring and Training Temporary Workers

Many organizations turn to staffing agencies to help with temporary hires. Staffing agencies can help save time and resources by providing organizations with a pool of pre-qualified applicants.

• These same agencies often take the lead when it comes to contacting references, and checking each applicant’s background.
• And, staffing agencies typically handle items related to billing, payroll taxes, and even insurance where applicable.

However, staffing agencies aren’t free. Therefore, when organizations don’t want to take on additional agency costs, they will dive into the temporary applicant pool on their own.

• Some organizations rely on internal referrals to help them find qualified temporary workers.
• Many organizations maintain contacts with different talent pools that they can dip in and out of when necessary.

No matter your approach, there are a few things that every organization has in common when it comes to hiring temporary workers—including the ways you want to train and bring new workers up to speed on your time & attendance system:

1. You’ll want to find ways to speed up the process of hiring temporary workers.

When hiring a temporary worker, you usually want to move quickly, especially if you’re in a hiring pinch, and your current employees could use some immediate help. But is there such a thing as moving too quickly? There can be.

• As you review your options, be sure that your temporary hire is a good fit for your culture.
• At the same time, keep immediate needs in mind. You might discover that your temporary hire might not be the ideal fit for a long-term hire, but has the right skills, mindset, and motivation to jump into the fray right now.

2. You’ll want to follow through with your usual hiring due diligence.

Background screens are fairly routine in hiring. They can also be time-consuming, not to mention expensive. While a staffing agency will conduct at least a partial background check, when you’re making a temporary hire on your own, the background check will be up to you.

• Be sure to verify things like dates of employment, the titles of jobs the candidate has held, their job-specific skills, and more.
• In addition, whether required by law or your organization’s policy, you might have to conduct a more comprehensive background screening related to specific job duties. This can include things like checking criminal records, driving records, asking to review a credit score, and even requesting a drug screening.

3. You’ll want to make sure that your time & attendance method is easy for them to learn and use.

No one wants to get bogged down in processes when they’re new to a job, and need to jump in quickly. Having a reliable time & attendance system that’s also easy to use and learn—like the automated time clocks in the TotalPass suite—can help you get your temporary hire off to a strong start.

Icon Time’s TotalPass automated time clocks provide a number of features that ease the learning curve, while giving managers insight into their operations:

• Track benefit accruals
• Measure productivity by job numbers
• Handle up to 99 different department codes
• Rely on encrypted data security
• Set and receive email alerts to help leaders manage issues related to overtime, high and low hours, employee punch alerts, and missed punches

TotalPass clocks can accommodate as many as 500 employees, no matter what the makeup of your employee roster is.

• Each clock’s user-friendly self-enrollment system makes it easy for new employees to get started.
• The TotalPass B600, which includes biometric fingerprint technology and a backup camera, provides a fail-safe way to ensure employee verification on every punch.
• You can also manage the B600 from anywhere, and from any device, as long as you have web connection.
• The TotalPass B600 can also give you greater insight and control as to when certain employees are onsite, what jobs they are performing, and even the equipment and machines they’re using.

The automated time clocks from Icon Time can make it easier for temporary workers to get comfortable with your system, and find their way into your workflow. The quicker you can bring them up to speed, the better it can be for your entire workforce.