Temporary employees - How to manage staff resources

Having extra help during your busy trading periods, such as during the summer season, can help your business stay flexible and meet demand but comes with complexities. This article covers some of the issues that need to be considered.

Temporary employees are hired on a fixed-term contract for an agreed period of time, either with an end date or upon completion of a specific project.

For example, this includes seasonal employees taken on for up to six months during a peak period, specialist employees or cover for maternity leave.

It doesn’t apply to those who have a contract with an agency (as they are likely to be an employee of the agency).

• Meet the demands of your peak trading periods in your industry
• Maintain high levels of service and customer expectations
• Avoid being overstaffed in low season when demand drops
• Support with staffing issues caused by sickness, holidays or maternity leave

Temporary employees are entitled to the same working conditions and benefits as your permanent employees in comparable roles. For example, they should have the same rate of pay and holidays entitlement (pro-rated) unless you can justify any less favourable treatment on objective business grounds.

Whether your employee is permanent or temporary, you should have a contract of employment in place. Legislation requires that any new hire be given a written statement of employment particulars by the date they start the job.

Yes. All workers are entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks’ holiday per year, which equates to 28 days’ holiday a year for a full-time worker. Your temporary employee will accrue holidays on a pro-rata basis during their first year of employment.

Your legal duties will still apply in respect to eligible jobholders.

You must offer temporary employees access to an occupational pension scheme however there are certain rules that mean you may be able to exclude a temporary worker from the pension scheme.

See our previous article on this Workplace Pensions for seasonal and temporary staff (albertgoodman.co.uk)

Where you are unable to guarantee a minimum number of hours work per week for the temporary employee, you may wish to consider using a zero hours contract. This is a type of contract where the employee is not guaranteed a set number of hours by the employer. Staff on these contracts are only paid for the hours they work, giving the employer more flexibility during periods where there’s less work for them to do, or where the amount of work is unpredictable.

Once you’ve checked all your legal obligations, there’s only one key element that you must remember when hiring temporary staff: choose carefully.

Just because you’re hiring staff on a temporary basis it doesn’t mean you should pick anyone who applies for the job. Do they have the skills and attributes you’d expect from your regular team?

It is always a good idea to try to hold interviews in advance of your busy season. Doing so means trial shifts can take place earlier, if necessary. You should bear in mind that where an individual is asked to carry out a ‘trial’, ‘test’ or ‘recruitment exercise’, the individual may nevertheless be a ‘worker’ and be entitled to the minimum wage during a trial shift.

Whilst Albert Goodman are not HR advisers, we do offer a payroll service and can help with your pension auto-enrolment duties. We also offer a Tax Investigation Service in conjunction with Croner-I and this offers clients who subscribe access to telephone and online support for HR, Legal and Health and Safety matters.

If you have any questions in relation to this article, please contact me or your usual Albert Goodman point of contact.