Temporary workers often come in to do a job and then move on. Because they don’t have the same level of commitment as full-time employees, the use of incentives can be a very effective way to boost their productivity and maximize your contingent workforce.
If you offer your full-time workers incentives, consider doing so for your temporary workers. Of course, there will be differences in the incentives you offer, but they can still be effective in boosting productivity.
Offer incentives with meaning
For employee rewards to be effective, they should actually appeal to your temp employees. Since contingent employees commonly don’t stay with the company for a long time, have incentives they can earn in a short time span. The incentives themselves should also be useful right away, like free food, career-advancement activities and on-the-spot incentives.
Tie perks directly to working for the company
Just because people know they are working for a company for a short time, that doesn’t mean they can’t take pride in the company they’re doing work for. A great way to both incentivize temporary staff and give them a sense of pride in your company is to extend any employee discounts, vendor discounts, exclusive products or promotional materials to them.
Temp-specific performance goals
If you are already offering performance-based incentives, consider offering a similar incentive program specifically tailored to your seasonal or temporary employees. For each task or responsibility, work with the management team to generate goals each seasonal employee can achieve in their time with your company. Convey these goals and incentives at the time they start with your company and periodically to get temporary employees engaged and enthusiastic about their work.
Non-monetary rewards and public recognition
Publicly recognizing the contributions of your temporary employees doesn’t cost you anything, can boost productivity and makes the recognized employees feel like they are a part of your team. You could also offer high-performing temporary employees non-financial perks like flextime, extended lunch or cross-training to provide them with new skills.
In particular, paid or unpaid time off can be a very effective incentive to offer good temporary workers. Offering this perk not only gives the worker something that full-time workers usually get, it also gives them a chance to get refreshed and come back with renewed enthusiasm.
Consider making them permanent
A commonly used way to maximize the performance of temporary staff is to give them the prospect of permanent employment at your company, known as a temp-to-hire arrangement. The key here is to actually make offers to a significant percentage of the temporary workers that walk through your doors. Temps talk and if the odds of getting a permanent job are low, this incentive won’t be very effective.
At TempsPlus of Paducah, we often work with our client companies to develop incentive programs for our contract employees. If your company is in need of a customized staffing solution, please contact us today.
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