How to Meet Workforce Shortage Without Hiring Full Time Employees?

Let’s assume that you have conducted workforce planning and you have found that you have the right number of people with the right knowledge, skills and abilities to meet your organization’s needs. That is great.But if you have found out that you have a shortage of manpower, then there are few non-traditional hiring options  that may provide you flexibility in your workforce plan. We will discuss all the possible options in this article in detail.

Before deciding about the non-traditional hiring options, we need know that;

• How many workers did we need?
• For what job do we need the workers?
• How soon will we need the workers?
• What budget do we have?

Having information about above, will help us to decide the best possible option for non-traditional hiring.

Temporary Labor: It is the most convenient way of meeting your workforce needs. In this you make a contact with a manpower supplier agency that sets how much you will pay to the agency and then the agency pays the employees wages, insurances and taxes etc.  The advantage of this option is that you don’t have to have the administrative task of payroll and the liability that comes with employing workers. You can also get the workforce very quickly and if things change, you can let them go. 

Disadvantage of this option is that workers trained by you during the assignment, eventually leave. So deciding about the temporary workforce, you need to take into consideration the type of the positions being filled by the temporary worker & time and training goes into it. Second disadvantage is that temporary workers may not have the same level of commitment & motivation as the long term employee.

Replacing job with Technology: Another option is replacing the job with technology. You may have noticed a few years back, on the Motorways, employees were deployed to collect the tool tax of the vehicles. But now M.Tag has been introduced that automatically deducts the tool tax. In this case, jobs of men sitting in the cabins to collect tax have been replaced with technology. Similarly, self check out at groceries stores in developed countries is an example of machines taking the place of the people. But if we think in another perspective, it is a company that employs workers for designing, manufacturing and shipping the machines, so sometimes technology also creates jobs as well.

Reassigning Work: In reassigning work options, we generally give the work/assignments of the employee to another employee. This happened a lot in the last economic downturn. Companies retained their best employees and reassigned the work of the laid off workers to those employees. In this option, employees expect a little bit more money, and rightly so as the job is twice what the person was hired to do. On the bright side, some employees may welcome the chance to learn new knowledge, skills and abilities.

Overtime: Overtime options can be a pretty helpful way to temporarily increase production. You have to comply with over time laws of the specific country/estate in which your organization is located. However, a long term use of overtime can be hard on employees ultimately causing problems with burnout, safety and quality. 

Reduce Turnover of Employees: We can retain the employees by improving working conditions, wages and culture of the organization. All of these things would really be helpful and they do seem like a good solution but it does take some time. 

Conclusion: In this article, we have discussed different options to avoid hiring a regular full time employee to meet your workforce needs.