CLO-Blog

Published May 2008

Training Temps

Brian Summerfield

When General Motors announced employee buyouts last year, the company wasn’t simply cutting jobs. What the company actually did was get rid of staff who – due to their compensation and benefits packages – made GM’s balance sheet untenable, and then hired temp factory workers at $18 per hour to replace them.

Like GM, several companies have come to depend on temps as a source of more cost-effective labor and/or a speedy solution for personnel needs in both blue- and white-collar roles. Moreover, these stints can range from a single day to several months. And as organizations’ demand for employees goes up, so will this market. In fact, it’s grown from a daily average of just under 4 million temps placed worldwide in 1996 to more than 9 million in 2007. Additionally, temp agency revenues (as an industry) have more than tripled in that same span.

Of course, this presents interesting questions for learning leaders, such as: Who is responsible for training all these professionals, the temp agency or the organization where the professional is placed? How much development should they receive? Should they get a full range of onboarding programs, or just be trained on the basic tasks they’re expected to perform?

I’d like to know what CLO readers have to say about the issues involved with training temps. Feel free to offer your thoughts in the comments section below.

Brian Summerfield is managing editor for Chief Learning Officer magazine. He can be reached at editor@clomedia.com.

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