How To Hire A Temporary Employee

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Summary: Temporary employees are employees that work for your business for a set period of time, so long as it’s less than one year. Generally speaking, temporary workers are hired to either fill a gap or to compensate for a period where a lot of work needs to get done quickly.

Temporary employees can serve many different purposes depending on the circumstance. They can fill a gap, be on call in case the primary employee isn’t available, or help compensate for a seasonal position.

Key Takeaways:

A temporary employee is an employee that works for a business for a set period of time, so long as it’s less than one year or 1,000 work hours.
There are several different reasons to hire a temporary employee. They include: staffing up for a busy season, helping with a backlog of work, or filling a gap, such as if one of your employees takes leave.
Hiring a temporary employee is very similar to hiring a long-term employee. You need to decide what you need, write a job description, post it, vet candidates, do interviews, and then hire the best fit.

What Is a Temporary Employee?

A temporary employee – sometimes also called a contingent, on-call, per diem, or as-needed employee – is an employee that works directly for your business but has a time limit set on their time of employment. They usually have a well-defined contract stating the length of their employment.

Taxes also work the same with temporary workers, as you’ll need to send them a W-2 and do withholding. Most are paid on an hourly basis; however, depending on the nature of the job, it’s also possible that they’ll be paid a salary.

While in terms of employment law, temporary employees have a specific meaning, in common conversation, it can have a couple of different interpretations. Here are differences between types of workers that can be referred to as “temporary” in different situations.

Temporary employee. Usually, a temporary employee will work for you for less than a year or fewer than 1,000 hours. Depending on the circumstances, they can be employed either part-time or full-time.
Independent contractor. A contractor doesn’t work directly for you. Some contractors are self-employed, while others can be hired through an agency. Having an additional contractor can help with certain specific problems or lift some of the load off your team for a while on a project. They are sometimes also called 1099 workers.
Seasonal hire. A seasonal hire is a type of temporary employee that will be hired during a business’s busiest season. For retail, this would be the holiday season. Other types of businesses have busy times that need extra help. It’s generally understood that the employee will only be employed during that busy time.
On-call or per diem. While on-call work is most often associated with the medical field, there are other instances where you need to have on-call or backup employees, such as aviation. In this case, these are employees that are on standby and are available to be called in as needed.
Part-time employee. A part-time employee is limited by the number of hours that they work rather than how long they work for your business. Part-time employees will often work for a business for a long time. While many temporary and seasonal employees are also part-time, being part-time doesn’t mean your employment is temporary.

Ways to Hire a Temporary Employee

There are various reasons to hire a temporary worker. Depending on your needs and reasons for hiring one, what you choose to do will vary. As there are various types of temporary employees, you’ll need to decide what’s best for your business and situation. Here are some recommended steps for hiring a successful temp worker.

Decide what suits your needs. When it comes to a temporary job, there are different reasons why you might look to hire someone on a short-term basis. Are you looking to hire someone who is a:
- Gap employee. There are times when you’ll only need an employee for a relatively short time to fill a gap. For instance, if someone’s taking medical or family leave, you may need to hire someone to fill the role while they’re gone.
- On-call or per diem. Do you need an employee to fill in under specific circumstances? For instance, substitute teachers are needed to be on-call to fill in when the full-time educator can’t make it in. There are other businesses where there always needs to be someone available, such as aviation, police, and fire.
- Seasonal help. A number of industries have a season or period of time where there’s more work to be done than usual. Agriculture is a major example, as there are spikes in work during the harvest season.
- Contractor. Hiring a contractor for a period of time can also be a way of having a temporary worker. Oftentimes this will be a consultant or someone to help catch up on a backlog of work. Contractors don’t work directly for your organization, so they are in a different category than other temporary workers.
Write down a job description. Once you know what you’re looking for, you need to write a job description. If you’re planning to recruit via job sites, this is extremely important. You need to have an accurate and engaging job description in order to draw candidates’ interest and get them to submit an application. Be clear that it’s short-term.
Select a recruiting method. Once you know what you’re looking for and the details of the job, you need to decide how you’re going to look for potential workers. There are several different ways to put an application out, such as posting it on a job site, like Zippia, or in a newspaper.

You may also decide to hire an agency. There are many different temp agencies out there that specialize in this exact situation. In most cases, when you use a temp agency, the person you hire will actually be a contractor, as they’ll be employed by the agency rather than by your organization.
Screen candidates. If you’re using an agency, they’ll take care of this part for you. However, if you aren’t, it’s important to do checks on temporary employees just like you with a long-term employee. This can include drug tests, background checks, and reference checks.
Interview candidates. After the screening, it’s time to start interviewing your candidates. It’s important to ensure that they know that the position is supposed to be a temporary one. It should be in the job description, of course, but it’s best to check to be sure your candidate knows what to expect.
Make an offer. Now that you’ve chosen the best candidate, it’s time to extend an offer. It’s important to be very clear that you’re making an offer and put their wages and other expectations into the offer letter.
Hire your temp worker. As soon as your preferred candidate accepts your offer, it’s time to officially hire them. For most temp workers, there’s no training period, or a truncated one, which means that they should be able to get right to work.

Pros and Cons of Temporary Employees

As with almost everything, there are both positive and negative aspects of hiring workers on a temporary basis. While the exact nature of the advantages and drawbacks will vary depending on your industry and what type of temporary worker you hire, here are some general pros and cons to consider.

Pros:

Fills a gap. If you need someone to fill in for a set amount of time, then a temporary employee is exactly what you want. This can be either for someone taking leave, going on a sabbatical or if you’re unable to find someone to meet specific parameters in a short period of time.
Saves money. The majority of temporary employees don’t receive benefits, which can save your business a lot of money. There are some exceptions, which will depend on the laws of the state they were hired in and how many hours they worked per week.
Is focused. In most cases, a temporary employee is hired for a specific role or purpose. That means they’ll be very focused on that and have a set deadline to finish it.
Compensate for cyclical work. If you work in an industry that has busy seasons and slow seasons, it’s not reasonable to be staffed up for your busy season all the time. A lot of your workers would sit idle. Temp workers help compensate for fluctuations in work and the requirements of your industry.
Can serve as a trial period. While not exactly a reason to hire a temporary worker, having a temp can serve as a trial period. When you hire a temporary worker, you should consider whether you want to have them full-time. That can end up saving a lot of time in terms of vetting new workers and training them.

Cons:

Weighted training costs. As temporary workers only work for you for a short time, the cost of their training isn’t spread out over a long career.

Though due to the nature of temp work, you usually try to shorten the training period, it can’t be omitted altogether. That means that temp workers are more expensive training-wise than longer-term workers.
Lack of integration. In most organizations, temporary workers are viewed differently than long-term employees, both by others and by themselves. That can mean that they never really fit in with the other employees at a business, which can lead to issues with morale.
Limited investment. Due to the short-term nature of the positions, many temporary workers won’t feel particular attachment or ownership of their work. They know that their job has an expiration date, so they’re unlikely to get attached to the organization or to their coworkers.
Potential safety issues. Because training is often shortened with temporary employees, there’s a higher chance of them becoming injured on the job. This likely also has to do with a lack of experience – the majority of temporary workers only work for less than a year at their jobs.