For most businesses, labour needs keep fluctuating requiring the hiring of temporary staff to fill labour gaps during peak times. Assessing your business’ staffing requirements enables you to anticipate and plan for peak-time staff shortages and make the necessary labour arrangements.

Conducting a business assessment helps you figure out the number of workers you’ll need and the hours needed for the temporary workforce. By knowing the number of hours that need to be filled in each department and the areas where your staff might require help the most, labour shortages can be eliminated and efficiency greatly improved.

Planning for staff requirements enables you to balance between efficiency and cost. It prevents under or overstaffing by ensuring your business always has the optimum number of workers.

How to assess your business’ temporary labour needs

To have a good understanding of your business’ labour requirements, you need to check the following:

  1. Peak demand. Check your past records and identify which months of the year have the highest demand for your products. Calculate the difference between the normal months and the highest months in terms of demand. This will show you the increase in production requirements and help you calculate the number of temporary employees you require for peak times.
  2. Employee leave. Ask your employees to apply for their next annual leave as soon as they return from the current one. This helps you forecast when the business will have a reduced workforce for proper planning.

With this information, planning for temporary labour needs is very easy. And by collaborating with a labour hire firm, you can have the temporary employees provided on time for seamless transitions.

Why planning is important

When it comes to temporary labour needs, planning is important because:

  1. It reduces downtime. With proper planning, your business will always have the optimum number of employees for operations reducing downtime due labour shortages.
  2. Prevents overworking of permanent employees. When employees are overworked, bad things happen: motivation dips, quality goes down, employee turnover increases and customer service suffers.
  3. It helps reduce overtime payments. Paying overtime is expensive, by planning ahead you can ensure that you have the required number of temporary employees to avoid a situation where you have to pay unnecessary overtime to your permanent employees.

At Blue Collar People, we review your labour requirements with you to provide the best individuals for your needs in the right number and at the right time. call now: (08) 9221 1911