Why Should Manufacturers Partner with a Temporary Staffing Agency in a Recession?

Posted on 03/27 by Erin Helms

During economic uncertainty, many leaders look for ways to cut costs and are hesitant to invest in new expenses. But for manufacturers, a recession is one of the most advantageous times to partner with a temporary staffing agency. In today’s volatile job market, employers from every industry can struggle to source and retain the talent they need. This challenge is even more present for industries like manufacturing that rely on large numbers of in-person employees to meet their production goals and stay profitable. Moreover, these large workforces are costly to maintain, especially amid the shifting demand and financial insecurity brought on by a tough economy. Partnering with a temporary staffing agency can provide relief for manufacturers experiencing these challenges. Temporary staffing services allow you to quickly and easily adjust your workforce to match the fluctuations of the economy—without shouldering additional expenses. This article outlines how manufacturing staffing agencies support companies like yours and explores a few of the main advantages of using temporary staffing services during a recession.

How Does a Manufacturing Staffing Agency Function?

A manufacturing staffing agency acts as a partner for manufacturers looking to build or scale a reliable, qualified workforce. These expert recruiters and staffing professionals connect success-minded manufacturers with experienced, hard-working job seekers in their area. Most manufacturing staffing agencies offer a wide range of services to fit the unique needs of the manufacturers they serve, including: Temporary Staffing: Manufacturing temp agencies can provide companies with contract employees to cover absent workers or assist during large-scale projects or periods of peak demand. Supplementing your full-time staff with temporary employees as needed can help increase efficiency and reduce overhead labor costs. Temp-To-Hire Staffing: Many manufacturing temp agencies offer their clients the option to convert a temporary employee to their full-time staff at the end of a trial period. This allows you to see how an employee performs on the job before fully committing to them, helping you avoid the risks and costs of bad hires. Direct Hire Staffing: Manufacturers looking to expand their full-time staff or to hire for specialized positions can use a staffing service to quickly access qualified candidates and shorten the path to hiring. Manufacturing staffing agencies typically handle every step of the hiring process, including sourcing candidates, screening resumes, conducting preliminary interviews, and sometimes even aspects of training and onboarding. Staffing agencies also give manufacturers access to a wider pool of skilled candidates who might be difficult to obtain through traditional hiring methods.

Advantages of Temporary Staffing Services in a Recession

In a challenging economy, it’s more important than ever to streamline your operations, support your full-time team members, and gain flexible, reliable access to the workforce you need. Partnering with a manufacturing temp agency can help you accomplish these goals, allowing you to recession-proof your business and safeguard against future disruption.

Hiring Temporary Workers Proves to Be Less Stressful

Even in a healthy economy, hiring new employees and maintaining a reliable workforce is stressful and time-consuming. During a recession, these stressors multiply and can wreak havoc on your operations and production. Employers are understandably wary of adding additional full-time staff in an uncertain economy; however, chronic understaffing can cause your business to miss deadlines, fall short on production goals, and drive your most valuable team members to burnout. Meanwhile, manufacturing leaders are concerned with big-picture staffing challenges and their impact on the company’s bottom line. Is your business understaffed or overstaffed? Will you need to pay overtime to your regular employees? Will you need to conduct large-scale layoffs and pay unemployment and severance costs? What happens if demand spikes after those layoffs, and you need additional workers again? A manufacturing temp agency can shoulder these stressors and leverage their expertise to keep your company optimally staffed in any and all conditions. Partnering with a temporary staffing agency means you can focus on the structure and oversight of your business, developing and implementing the strategies that will empower your organization to succeed through a recession and beyond. Using temporary staffing services can also relieve significant financial stressors for your organization. Typically, staffing agencies assume responsibility for all costs associated with hiring and managing a temporary workforce, including accruals, leaves, payroll, benefits, and more. Finally, temporary staffing agencies often have access to a pool of pre-qualified candidates available for immediate assignments. This means temporary manufacturing employees can start at the moment you need them to, preventing further production delays. Overall, hiring employees through a manufacturing temp agency reduces stress by ensuring you’ll be able to maintain the workforce you need when you need it—even while sticking to a tighter, recession-minded budget.

Temporary Workers Serve as a Valuable Resource

One of the most important things a business can do during a recession is to continue supporting and investing in their full-time employees. If a tough economy has forced your organization to conduct layoffs or operate with a reduced staff, your most valuable team members can easily become overworked and burnt out. Employee burnout—and the attrition that can potentially follow—can put your company in an even more precarious state during a recession. But how can you bolster your staff in an uncertain economy? Temporary employees can provide much-needed relief and support for your regular staff members who may have worked consistent overtime to keep your business running in a recession. A reduced workforce can also mean that your skilled core staff members are assigned to low-priority or administrative tasks that eat up their time and don’t take full advantage of their skill set. When you use temporary staffing services, those duties can be outsourced to your temporary workers, freeing up your regular employees’ valuable time for the work that will help move your organization forward. Temporary workers can be a resource for manufacturing leadership as well as employees on the shop floor. During a recession, many leaders seek to focus on radically changing or restructuring their organizations to weather future storms. But it’s difficult to plan for the future if you’re constantly concerned with being either understaffed or overstaffed. Employees from a manufacturing staffing agency can provide your organization with the temporary structure and continuity of labor you need to keep your business running while you design your company’s future.

Temporary Workers Bring a Fresh Perspective

A challenging economy is hard on everyone. Your full-time staff members might be stressed about the impact of a recession on the company as well as on their personal lives and finances. This stress and worry can lead to a deterioration in company culture and an overall negative mindset among employees. Temporary workers who haven’t been personally impacted by internal changes in your company can help revitalize the team spirit of your manufacturing business. In addition to relieving pressure on your full-time staff by supplementing their labor, temporary employees can bring a much-needed fresh outlook and positive mindset to the workplace. Moreover, employees from manufacturing staffing agencies often see temporary assignments as stepping stones to a larger career path—chances to prove themselves in a variety of roles. Because of this, many temporary employees are adaptable, driven, and will work hard to achieve success. Another benefit that temporary employees from a manufacturing staffing agency bring to the table is industry experience. Many of them have worked a variety of manufacturing jobs and can support your staff in a diverse range of tasks. Because of their industry experience and fresh perspective, temporary employees may also be able to suggest innovative changes to workflows and processes that can improve your organization’s operations, enabling a higher degree of productivity even during a recession.

Gain Access to Skilled Manufacturing Talent When in Need

Even in a stable economy, manufacturers often experience dramatic fluctuations in demand and workload. Some employers bring on large numbers of full-time employees during seasons of peak production. But this leads to overstaffing, which can spell disaster during an economic downturn. Employers whose manufacturing companies are overstaffed are left to either pay for employees they don’t need, or pay for severance and unemployment costs associated with layoffs. Partnering with a manufacturing staffing agency allows your company to quickly adjust to sudden fluctuations in both seasonal demand and the larger economic landscape. With the help of a temporary staffing agency, you can access the exact manufacturing talent you need when you need it—and discontinue their services when you don’t. This strategic staffing allows your company to build the workforce you need to meet demand and weather economic uncertainty without incurring expenses like additional full-time wages, overtime pay, unemployment benefits, or severance packages.

Partner with a Manufacturing Staffing Agency to Recession-Proof Your Company

If you’re looking to safeguard your manufacturing business against a recession, LaborMAX is ready to help. As one of the top staffing agencies in the country, we specialize in placing skilled candidates with success-minded manufacturers across the United States. Our temporary, temp-to-hire, and direct hire placement services can provide you with employees who are skilled, screened, and safely trained, and can start working for your organization at the moment you need them. Contact our Team at LaborMAX to Fill Manufacturing Jobs! With LaborMAX on your side, your manufacturing business can reduce overtime expenses, increase productivity, and add flexibility to your workforce—all of which are instrumental in recession-proofing your company. Contact us today to tell us about your unique needs.

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