Hire permanent
staff or do
business with
an employment
agency?

Hiring temporary staff in a business is an increasingly popular practice. According to Statistics Canada, the operating revenues of employment agencies doubled in Canada between 2001 and 2011. These agencies are especially active in certain sectors, but they can be involved in practically any type of business.

In order to help you determine if this approach is adapted to your needs, we examined the question and identified the main advantages and disadvantages of hiring temporary staff.

How can hiring temporary staff help me?

Hiring temporary staff can be especially beneficial in certain situations. Here are a few examples.

Fill absences

You will inevitably have to deal with all sorts of absences among your regular staff: maternity leaves, vacation, extended illnesses, etc.

In these circumstances, employment agencies can help you to adapt rapidly to the situation, without having to make binding commitments to replacements.

Fill ad hoc needs

In some business activities, staffing needs vary a great deal from one year to another. In high season, it may be worthwhile to use temporary staff in order to fill ad hoc needs.

In the same line of thinking, if there is a sudden surge in popularity for your products and services and your permanent staff is unable to handle the amount of work to be done, you could temporarily increase your ranks with temporary employees.

Simplify hiring and reduce expenses

As you probably know, a hiring process can be tiring and time-consuming. It's an essential step (unless you resort to head-hunters, but that's a topic for another article) when you want to hire someone, but it may be a bit demotivating to make this effort when you already know that you're hiring someone temporarily.

However, an employment agency has its own pool of staff. Therefore, it’s the agency that takes care of the hiring process for you: Posting the job offer, receiving résumés, filtering candidatures, interviews, etc.

Why it's good to rely on permanent employees

Even though there are several advantages to recruiting temporary staff through employment agencies, there are also several disadvantages compared to hiring permanent staff.

Put together your own team of qualified people

Permanent employees are not necessarily more competent or more productive than temporary employees. However, they are more imbued with your company's culture and your ways of doing things.

If you want to encourage the maintaining of a strong corporate culture and offer consistent service to your customers, you will probably be better served by permanent staff.

Establish a relationship of trust

It may be difficult to establish a relationship of trust with temporary employees when you already know that they will only be with you for a short time. They will likely be trustworthy, but they probably won't have time to show you. That's why it may be harder for you to delegate sensitive files to temporary staff.

With permanent employees, it will always be easier to establish a relationship of trust, with you and your other employees as well.

How to find an employment agency?

In short, it's great to have a permanent, well-trained team. However, hiring temporary staff can be very useful for filling ad hoc needs.

To find an employment agency that meets your staffing needs, refer to the website of the Association of Canadian Search, Employment and Staffing Services (ACSESS), which brings together about 80% of sector agencies.