As the US unemployment rate hovers near all time lows, most manufacturing plants continue to see challenges in using temporary workers to fill line labor, material handling and other production support roles.
With staffing agreement language that often prevents a temporary employee from working at an assignment for more than 90/120/180 days, why has the use of temporary staffing become a permanent solution? Why has a labor model that guarantees turnover, in most cases, become accepted as the norm?
The reason is that there hasn’t been an alternative or effective solution… until now.
The answer is LACOSTA managed labor staffing.
Temp Downsides
Temporary workers provide a quick way for organizations and HR departments to fill open positions. However, the average turnover for temp providers ranges between 100-400%, and that just the average. It’s hard for any business, let alone manufacturing plants to operate with such demanding turnover levels.
One particularly negative side affect of the revolving door of temps is that HR or other management personnel are constantly in training mode, taking away time they could be spending on employee development or other areas that help drive their business forward. Temp staffing companies are good at finding warm bodies to drop at your door but they don’t conduct any training or oversight. This requires valuable time from your team to ensure the temps are prepared to do their jobs
Industry Week summarized it this way, “Temporary workers in the manufacturing sector also typically need more training than in the past, whether it’s training on company requirements, welding, forklift driving or SAP. This requires more of an investment of a company’s time and money.”
Accidents & Injuries
With minimal training, a revolving door of new employees and limited customer resources to devote the appropriate time to overseeing temp workers, how much production inefficiency and accidents are related to new temps making mistakes?
Noted in Industry Week: “After a worker was killed in a conveyor belt accident at an Amazon warehouse in 2014, an OSHA investigation found that four different temp agencies were overseeing warehouse workers, and yet another temporary agency was overseeing the other agencies. All five agencies were cited.”
Inadequate training was a primary reason the Temporary Worker Initiative was created by OSHA in 2013, which establishes that “staffing agencies and host employers are jointly responsible for maintaining a safe work environment for temporary workers – including, for example, ensuring that OSHA’s training, hazard communication, and recordkeeping requirements are fulfilled.
“OSHA could hold both the host and temporary employers responsible for the violative condition(s) – and that can include lack of adequate training regarding workplace hazards.”
The Plight of Temps, Low Margins & Cutting Corners
A recent National Public Radio story profiled one temporary worker’s plight: “Isaura Martinez was working at a Bolingbrook factory when she felt a pull in her left wrist as she was attaching a metal hook to the back of a Christmas card holder. Four years have passed, but the Cicero woman still feels pain, after surgery to correct the issue.
“She was a temporary worker hired out by a staffing agency at the time of the injury. Every worker, she says, was required to do a variety of tasks, such as packaging coffee and tobacco and assembling cardboard boxes for toothpaste. Because she was employed through a staffing agency, it was unclear to her who was responsible for overseeing training and other working conditions.
“She says the staffing agency had her work with an injured wrist for three months without restrictions, until she sued the firm.
“She also experienced lack of training, which resulted in work injuries.”
According to Mark Meinster, executive director of Warehouse Workers for Justice, the “low-margin business for staffing agencies” forces them to “cut corners.”
Consider Managed Labor as an Alternative to Temp Staffing
As part of our managed labor approach to staffing, LACOSTA handles all recruiting, hiring, training, and supervising for you, reducing your training costs to zero. Every employee assigned to an account is a LACOSTA employee who receives industry leading benefits such as healthcare coverage, 401(k) match, weekly payroll processing and paid time off (PTO). These benefits, along with our extensive training program, improve employee morale and increase employee retention, which leads to greater operational efficiency and an improved safety culture that directly impacts your bottom line. Managed labor staffing also frees up your HR and production supervisors so you can allocate your resources to the core functions that drive your business forward.
Better yet: Managed Labor “all-in” costs are actually lower than temps by up to 30% – with at least 15% guaranteed.
Best yet: we often pay for ourselves because our proactive approach and LEAN operating methodology drives us to implement best practices and identify cross functional opportunities that saves our clients hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
If you’re interested in LACOSTA’s Managed Labor approach or are curious how we may supplement your current, temp staffing operation, contact us and see why many of the world’s largest companies are turning to LACOSTA for their managed labor services needs.
To get started, contact us to request a managed labor site audit to see how much you will save.