Whether to hire temps or pay your regular employees overtime depends on a number of factors, and you have to look at your individual business to see what is best for you.

Overtime Pay

Federal law requires businesses to pay overtime to workers when they go over 40 hours for the work week. You can definitely reduce or eliminate overtime pay if you hire temp workers, but whether you will save money long term is not a certainty. That is because of the additional expenses that are involved in using temps – hiring and training these workers.

Nonexempt employees, whether they are temporary or permanent, earn overtime pay for any time worked over 40 hours in a seven-day period. Overtime is one and one-half times a worker’s hourly rate. That translates to more than $10 an hour for federal minimum wage workers.

Advantages of Temps

So, you can eliminate overtime pay with temps. Also, you may not have to worry about benefits for temps because that is taken care of by the staffing agency. And many temp agencies take care of background checks. If you have people who can train the temps, and the job is not too complicated or requiring advanced skills sets, it might be worthwhile hiring temps. If you have a long-term project or a brief time period when the amount of work is heavier, it might pay you to hire temps in this situation as well. For these situations, it may not be cost effective to hire full-time workers.

However, if you don’t have people who can train the temps, and they won’t be needed on a regular basis, it may not be in your best interest to hire them.

Check with Employees

Before hiring temps, you should meet with your employees to discuss the situation. You want to gauge their reaction to see how morale might be affected if new workers are brought in. Find out if people are willing to work overtime. A high performing employee working overtime might be more cost effective than hiring a temp when you have to take the time to screen people, orient a new temp, train the person and then supervise him or her.

If your company is looking for temporary employees, you need to work with Arrow Staffing. We work with you to get the best people for the job, and we screen them thoroughly. There is no better or more experienced staffing agency in the Inland Empire. Give Arrow Staffing a call today.