Temp to Perm: The New Employment Model

Friday, July 08, 2011

As organizations have cut back on permanent full time jobs, many employers have turned to “temps” as a means to supplement the remaining positions and to fill in when extra help is needed.  This is really not a new trend; organizations have been using “temporary workers” for decades. What may be new is that “temping” has become a permanent way of life for some.

In an era when all jobs seem to be “temporary”, the proposal that there are individuals who choose to make a career of temporary assignments may not be so absurd. When employed by a large international human resources consulting firm here in Atlanta, I once had an IS development project team which included a member who had chosen to work strictly temporary IS project assignments north of I-285. Between assignments she used the downtime to rejuvenate herself.

In a 2010 report published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it is estimated that by 2008 the temporary employment service industry had come to account for some 2.3 million workers. The chart below, taken from the 2010 report shows that over the period from 1990 to 2008 temporary serice workers grew exponentially while total employment gained 20% over that same 18 year period.

In addition, during this same period of time, the nature of temporary assignments changed. In the early days of the temporary service industry, the nature of the work was mainly clerical and industrial. However, by the 1990’s more and more professional roles were to be seen in the ranks of the temporary worker. Attorneys, engineers, physicians, and others could be found as “temps”.

While “Office and Administrative” job classifications continue to make up over 20% of the temporary service industry workforce, “Healthcare practitioners” now make up almost 5% of those 2.7 million workers. It might seem to the outsider that “temp” jobs pay very little, actual temporary wages mirror market place wages very closely. Take for example the average temporary salaries of “Management” workers in the temporary area at almost $98,000 in 2008.

It is true that most temporary work assignment have fewer employee benefits than permanent full time jobs. However, as the demand for temporary workers has grown, some temporary employment firms have begun to offer traditional benefits on a limited basis. Temporary workers with in-demand skills often find themselves working for temporary employment firms for extended periods of time in a similar relationship to any other employment situation.

For some individuals, the value of a temporary assignment is that they get to “try out the job” while at the same time the employer gets to “test drive” employee. The advantage is that organizations which do not fit the employee’s style are weeded out and employees who do not fit into the company’s culture are identified up front. This avoids the uncomfortable situation where a new employee has to be released and lessens the likelyhood that an employee finds themselves back on the street.