A temporary employee is someone who is not a permanent employee. In fact, the dictionary says something that is temporary is the opposite of what is permanent.
People who work in a business who are not part of the permanent or full time workforce are called part time workers or temps. Businesses may have their own pool of temps or they may hire a temporary employment service or staffing service to send temps to them. A staffing service will be defined later in this chapter.
Permanent employees are people who are hired to be a lasting or continuous part of a company. A company hires them for an indefinite amount of time. When a permanent employee leaves a company, it is usually because the employee has taken another job, is retiring, is moving, or has been fired.
Businesses are in existence to provide a service or sell a product. They must have staff to do this. Businesses now have two ways of creating a staff. They can do it the standard way, which is to create their own personnel department. The personnel or human resources department then hires people or staff to be permanent employees for that particular company. Those people may stay and be promoted and grow with the company that is, if they work out.
If these permanent employees do not work out, the business must fire them and start the recruitment process all over again. That keeps the personnel office of the company busy.
Or the company may choose to hire staff in another way: The Company may contract with a staffing service to send temps over to the business. These temps will do the same work that full time employees do, but the business where the temps work is not responsible for providing benefits (health insurance, a retirement plan, etc.) for them. And, if the temporary employee is not a good fit for the business where he or she is working, it is the problem of the temp service to fix it, not the problem of the personnel department of the business. As temporary or staffing services work with more sophisticated or professional employees, the nature of the relationship between the service and the temps is changing. Services are offering better benefits to get the most qualified pool of employees.
Growth of Professional Technical Temps
Professional temps are those skilled in the financial and legal fields as well as the occupations of information technology, computer science, engineering, healthcare, management, and related fields. The financial professionals include accountants, auditors, chief financial officers, and bookkeepers. The legal professionals who temp are paralegals and attorneys. People who are in science and healthcare, sales and marketing professionals, and those in middle and senior management are also doing professional temping. In fact, according to NATSS, the use of professional temporaries has increased 48% from 1991 through 1996. Professional and technical staffing increased 25% annually, according to Staffing Industry Review, August 1996.
One of the fastest growing segments of temp skills includes technical workers. These are engineers, computer programmers, computer systems analysts, designers, drafts persons, and technical illustrators and editors.
The nature of the staffing service has changed. It was previously known as a business of sending the right secretary or laborer to fill in for some day needs.
Now the temporary industry calls itself the staffing service industry because the industry is no longer just about temping. The staffing industry is about finding skills and matching them to the demands of businesses. Therefore, the staffing industry has evolved from sending only factory workers and secretaries to placing people who have sophisticated professional technical skills. That is why the fastest growing segment of temporary usage is professional temporaries. Temp services or staffing services now send people on jobs who are information technology specialists.
Professional Temp Defined
Professional technical temps may be licensed by regulatory services or the government to practice their profession (attorneys, doctors, accountants, engineers); their work is subject to a professional code of ethics; and they almost always hold academic degrees. Professional temps are not in the traditional occupations noted for hiring temps, such as office support, secretaries, and factory workers. Examples of professional temps are architects, physician assistants, registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, pharmacists, lawyers, paralegals, engineers, and accountants.
Executive Temp Defined
Executive temp tends to have experience in management and supervision of other's skills for long range planning and implementation of company goals. Examples are city planner, executive vice president, sales manager, and product manager.
