Light industrial and manufacturing companies frequently experience seasonal shifts in demand. When demand increases, businesses need effective but flexible workforce management solutions, allowing them to right-size their teams quickly and affordably. Here’s a look at what companies need to do to prepare for workload peaks and how partnering with the right staffing agency in St. Louis, Missouri, simplifies preparing for workload peaks.
What Is the Impact of Increased Demand on Businesses?
Many companies experience seasonal upticks in demand as part of their broader sales cycle. Demand increases for industrial and manufacturing businesses typically lead to more revenue-driving opportunities. However, seasonal demand shifts also come with challenges that need navigating.
One of the most obvious difficulties is making sure that the company’s workforce can effectively handle the boost in demand. When demand rises, production needs to increase to ensure enough products or components are created to capitalize on the seasonal uptick.
Companies may turn to mandatory overtime to align activity levels with updated production goals without the right-sized workforce. While that can work as a short-term solution, extended periods of overtime come with consequences. First, it increases worker fatigue and stress, and as employees get closer to the point of exhaustion, work quality can dip, and burnout rates rise. Second, overtime is expensive, and the rise in costs reduces profitability.
Fortunately, by proactively planning for increased seasonal demand, achieving the right-sized workforce is easier. Often, partnering with a temporary staffing agency in St. Louis is the best choice, giving you a quick and cost-effective way to bolster your workforce on a short-term basis.
What Is the Role of a Temporary Staffing Agency?
When companies partner with temp agencies in St. Louis, Missouri, they receive an array of beneficial services designed to increase access to talent, streamline hiring, reduce risk, and more. The recruiters begin the process by learning about your company’s hiring needs and unique culture. They can build a candidate profile to expedite the sourcing and selection processes with that information.
After learning about your ideal candidate, the recruiters at the temporary staffing agency leverage their existing talent database to find suitable matches. Additionally, they’ll use a variety of resources to advertise the opening, increasing your access to talent further.
As candidates are identified, they undergo a comprehensive screening process. Skills, experience, and personalities are evaluated through application reviews, interviews, and skills assessments to ensure fit. Additionally, the recruiters conduct reference and background checks as part of the process.
Recruiters then refer top-quality candidates to you for further evaluation. You can conduct interviews or other assessments to ensure job seekers genuinely match your needs. Then, as you select new hires, the temporary staffing firm handles the onboarding process, ensuring candidates know everything they need to perform well on the job.
Since the new hires are temporary employees, they remain on the staffing firm’s payroll. This approach dramatically decreases risk and reduces the administrative burden of hiring and personnel management. The staffing agency handles workers’ compensation and unemployment, removing them from your plate.
How Can Employers in St. Louis Plan Ahead for Seasonal Demands with the Help of a Staffing Agency?
Adapting your workforce to meet seasonal demands requires a strategic, proactive approach. By partnering with a staffing agency, you’ll get ample support and guidance, empowering you to right-size your workforce while keeping costs manageable and risk low.
Here’s a look at how the right staffing partner can help employers in St. Louis navigate their shifting workforce needs.
Staffing Experts Help with Assessing Seasonal Workforce Needs
When you’re looking at temp services in St. Louis, choosing a leading recruitment agency works in your favor. You’ll receive support from staffing experts who can help with assessing your seasonal workforce needs well before workload peaks begin.
Your recruitment team will review historical data to help estimate the number of short-term hires required to meet productivity goals. Additionally, they’ll work with you to develop an effective hiring and onboarding timeline.
Additionally, by choosing a temporary staffing firm that focuses on light industrial and manufacturing, you can leverage their industry knowledge to prepare for unique situations created by existing economic conditions. That allows you to work together to develop a workforce management plan, ensuring that candidates with the right skills and experience are available at the proper moment.
Tailor Custom Staffing Solutions
When you work with a staffing agency in St. Louis, Missouri, to prepare for workload peaks, you can get flexible, customized staffing solutions that align with your company’s unique needs. Several hiring programs are available, and you can mix and match them to create your ideal hiring plan.
For short-term demand increases, you can leverage temporary employees to handle upticks in demand without any long-term commitment. Whether you need extra hands for a day, week, month, or season, you can access the right kind of talent for the correct amount of time. Additionally, you’re able to increase or decrease your temporary workforce swiftly, allowing you to adapt to the unexpected.
Staffing agencies also have temp-to-hire programs. With temp-to-hire, companies can conduct working interviews before making permanent job offers. Companies leveraging temporary hiring solutions can also convert top performers into permanent employees, an option that works well if a temp worker exceeds expectations and can address a long-term need.
Utilize Network of Local Talent for Employers in Immediate Need
Temp services in St. Louis understand the challenges that come with talent acquisition. That’s why they act proactively, cultivating robust candidate pools brimming with top talent. When you partner with a local staffing firm, you can leverage their talent network, making finding candidates to address immediate hiring needs easier.
The recruitment teams are constantly on the lookout for local job seekers with in-demand skills and experience. When they identify a top talent, they use their comprehensive approach to thoroughly vet them to determine precisely what they bring to the table. That strategy ensures that job seekers are of a suitable quality, and that makes finding the right-fit candidates easier for client companies.
Additionally, the recruiters focus on the candidate’s experience and communication throughout the process, boosting candidate engagement. Engaged candidates are classically more responsive, making talent more accessible. Plus, the recruitment team knows which job seekers can begin in a new position right away, allowing them to shorten the hiring timeline for client companies that need to file vacancies immediately.
Assist with Training and Onboarding of Seasonal Hires
When companies select candidates to join their team, onboarding, and training are both necessities, as they ensure compliance with applicable laws and set incoming employees up for success. However, those processes are often cumbersome, particularly for companies that need to increase their workforce quickly and by a sizeable amount.
Client companies can access critical onboarding and training support by partnering with a local staffing agency. The recruitment team will handle all initial hiring documentation, ensuring candidates are brought onto their payroll quickly. Additionally, the recruiters can provide customized initial training, ensuring selected new hires are ready for the nuances of their role, aware of safety standards, and more.
Client companies don’t have to handle these onboarding and training activities internally. Instead, they can focus on other matters that genuinely require their personal attention, making it easier for them to adapt to peak season without having to sacrifice candidate onboarding and training.
Provide Guidelines on Handling Legal and Compliance Issues
Most employers understand that employment and hiring law is complex, including when bringing in temporary workers. When you partner with leading temp agencies in St. Louis, Missouri, you’ll receive explicit guidance that simplifies legal and compliance issues.
The recruitment team is well-versed in applicable employee and employer law and follows all mandates that apply to your industry. Additionally, they can provide you with information regarding your own hiring practices, ensuring efforts handled internally are correctly managed and compliant with existing rules and regulations.
Whether you need insights into minimum wage laws, regulations relating to breaks and lunches, working hour restrictions, or any other legal issues, staffing firms can point you in the right direction. The recruiters are diligent about remaining up-to-date, ensuring all information they share aligns with local requirements.
Partner with a Staffing Agency in St. Louis, Missouri to Ready Your Business for Seasonal Workload Peaks
Preparing for seasonal workload peaks requires a proactive and strategic process and a cost-effective approach. By partnering with a staffing agency, it’s far easier to right-size your workforce while remaining compliant and minimizing personnel expenses.
At Westside Personnel, we specialize in assisting manufacturing and industrial companies with their hiring needs. Whether you’re filling permanent positions or need flexible hiring solutions to prepare for workload peaks, Westside Personnel is your go-to staffing agency in St. Louis, Missouri. Our recruiters will work with you to identify your unique hiring needs and find top talent on your terms. If you need temporary hires to right-size your workforce this season, request employees today!