Wonolo
When It comes to optimizing your workforce, you need to blend together the right combination of permanent employees and temporary workers. Your total staff base must meet the exact needs of your business and be sized correctly at all times, so you have the right people, doing the right jobs, in the right way.
An essential part of workforce optimization is translating business needs into worker skills and roles, then getting the right temporary people to fill those positions. Here’s how to go about doing just that.
Step One — Understand Business Needs by Department
Start by going through your business departments one by one. You will want to identify the key skills and roles needed in each business area. For example, customer service agents need to have an excellent approach to communications, while warehouse workers must be very safety conscious. Review all of the existing roles in each area and interview team leaders, department heads, supervisors, managers, and team members on any shortfalls in skills or talent.
You should then have a complete understanding of exact business needs by area.
Step Two — Work Out Which Roles and Skills can be Performed by Temporary Workers
Generally speaking, temporary workers won’t be as highly trained as your regular, permanent employees. This means they are not ideally suited to skilled, complex jobs or tasks. They can still be very valuable to your business, but generally in roles that don’t require much formal training or dedicated approaches.
Identify all the business needs in your organization that can be met by temporary workers.
Step Three — See if there are Responsibilities and Activities that Can be Divested from Permanent Employees to Temporary Workers
You want to get the best return on investment from both your permanent employees and temporary workers. Sometimes, that might mean assigning low-value activities from your permanent employees to temporary workers. This can free up your permanent employees to perform higher value tasks for your business and customers. Look at the responsibilities of your permanent employees and see what activities could easily be shifted to temporary workers.
Create a list of skills that permanent employees are currently doing that can be reassigned.
Step Four — Understand Likely Future Requirements in Each Department
Businesses never stand still, so demands from each department are going to change. Understand what future needs are likely to be for both permanent employees and temporary workers so you can plan any changes into your workforce optimization.
Review your business strategy and other initiatives in your organization to understand future demands.
Step Five — Create Ideal Roles for Temporary Workers
Now you understand the requirements for the various departments in your business, it’s time to put together ideal roles for temporary workers. Be sure you cover the following areas:
Role title — what the position is called.
Job brief — a quick overview of the key areas that the job covers.
Duties — the key tasks that the person will be performing.
Skills — any necessary skills that you will expect the temporary worker to have.
Education — any qualifications that you will expect the temporary worker to have.
Other requirements — any other details that you want the temporary worker to know.
Pay rates — how much you are paying on an hourly or daily basis.
Step Six — Convert the Role Description into an Online Job Ad
If you want to attract the right temporary workers to fill your positions, they need to sound appealing. Create job ads that clearly explain the positions in the best possible way. If you’d like some inspiration, we’ve created example job ads for delivery drivers, general laborers, merchandisers, data entry clerks, receptionists, servers, warehouse workers, dishwashers, cooks, and warehouse workers.
Make the online job ad as compelling and complete as possible.
Step Seven — Post Your Job to Wonolo
Wonolo is the easiest and quickest way for you to find the perfect temporary workers for your business needs. You can post jobs in minutes and fill all your temporary worker needs in hours. Even better, you can flex your temporary workforce up and down easily, so you can meet business demand at all times.
When you combine this approach to workforce optimization with understanding what your business demands are likely to be through the year you can create a powerful, adaptable workforce that will perfectly support changing business needs.
