How Small Businesses Can Benefit from Hiring a Staffing Agency

Small businesses can’t always afford a full-time receptionist, delivery driver or even a temporary warehouse worker during peak holiday seasons. That’s where temp agencies come in. Unlike large or even mid-sized companies, small businesses are much more hesitant to use temporary staffing.

According to inc.com, 90% of Fortune 500 companies use temporary and contract staffing while only 12% of businesses with 25 to 99 employees use staffing companies.

Part of the reason for this disparity is that small business owners fear that temp workers might be more trouble than they are worth in terms of assimilating temporary workers into the workplace, in addition to training them. However, using temp workers brings far more benefit to a small business in the long run. Here are a few ways staffing agencies can take the headache out of small business hiring.

1. Find Employees with Specific Talent

While you probably know your industry and business very well, it may be difficult to understand some of the niche roles that are needed within your company. If you’re not an IT Specialist or a forklift operator, you may not know how to attract the right professional to your team.

Staffing agencies can help you identify, qualify and contact talented individuals you may not know how to find by yourself. A staffing agency can also perform background and employment checks, check references, drug screen and e-verify.

2. Free Up Your Time

Hiring the wrong people doesn’t only impact labor costs and increase turnover, it is also a significant investment of time, effort and resources. First you have to post the job, screen applicants, and then interview and train them. As a small business, with limited resources it is an investment that you should not, and frankly, cannot afford to take lightly.

For example, once you recognize a need for an electrician, how do you find the best talent, in the shortest amount of time at a cost-effective rate?This task becomes even harder if you do not know the first thing about recruiting, vetting and hiring for that specific skill. Interviewing multiple job candidates can become an overwhelming process that can take weeks, or even months, and can distract you from growing your company.

Working with a staffing agency that specializes in your desired industry may be the next logical step, and will save valuable time that can be spent on more important things like running your business.

3. Reduce the Cost of Bad Hires

Staffing agencies do represent an added labor cost once you contract their services. However, working with a staffing agency could represent long-term benefits. For instance, using a staffing agency can drastically reduce your chances of making the wrong hire. The Department of Labor estimates the cost of replacing a single employee to be one-third of their annual salary. Additionally, hiring the wrong employee and fixing the mistake within 6 months can cost as much as 2.5 times the person’s annual salary. Even at $40,000 a year, that is a $120,000 mistake. Why not just do it right the first time?

4. Benefit from a Motivated Job Search

Let’s be honest…there are a number of tasks that you would prefer to do instead of spiffing through hundreds of resumes and applications searching for the right hire. Many small business owners take on this task themselves and end up dragging out the process and costing themselves more money as they struggle without the proper staff in place.

Since you are paying a staffing agency to find the right employees for you, they will not suffer from a lack of motivation or time. Moreover, since staffing agencies can only compete on their reputations, they have become skilled at eliminating unqualified job candidates.

How do you currently recruit and hire new employees? Why not let Link do it? Visit us at www.linkstaffing.com or call 1.800.848.5465. For more information on how temp agencies work, check out our recent blog post!