Flexible Staffing Solutions for Your Manufacturing

No matter what the size of your business is, no fixed one-way approach can meet all your recruitment needs in today’s time.

The best-recommended approach towards staffing is a balanced mix of several things: hiring a permanent workforce, hiring temporary employees, hiring freelancers, bringing in interns, etc.

In this article, we will throw light on the concept of flexible staffing solutions, the advantages of the same, and how you can craft the best flexible staffing model for your manufacturing firm.

To begin with, let’s be clear with the definition first:

Flexible Staffing is essentially an alternative to hiring permanent employees.

For various requirements, companies may decide to hire part-time employees, independent freelancers, gig-workers, or contractors (agency-provided or independent).

This non-traditional practice of filling vacancies as per the evolving demands of the business is known as flexible staffing.

Now that we know what all falls under the umbrella of flexible staffing solutions, let us look at a few examples.

1. Filling a temporary labor gap, for example, an employee on maternity leave
2. Handling a seasonal/ urgent need, for example, increased workload for a toys manufacturer before Christmas
3. Testing out talent before converting to permanent employment
4. Temporary access to top professionals, for example, consulting with an email marketing expert
5. Quicker, simpler, and a more cost-effective process, for example, a small business hiring a freelancer for designing their logo

Clearly, a well-thought flexible staffing model provides you with a huge edge over your competitors: it makes your workforce resilient enough to combat any unpredictable challenges that the future might bring with it.

Now, let us discuss the advantages that make flexible staffing a go-to solution for companies across the globe.

No one can deny the fact that having a permanent workforce has its own advantages of productivity, company growth, team spirit, loyalty, and company culture. At the same time, businesses that stick to the same process can hurt themselves in the long run in regards to the net outputs and profitability.

The global market is way more unpredictable today than ever. For manufacturings, the demand for produce and supply of raw materials + adequate labor keeps on changing in the smallest of time intervals.

One cannot easily increase or decrease the size of their permanent employee pool. Hiring and laying off permanent talent requires an ample amount of time, energy, and costs.

In contrast to this, imagine being able to control your workforce’s quantity and quality.

This is the most important advantage that a flexible staffing model provides to you, i.e., reshaping your workforce as per the business demands; without the complexities, costs, and legal formalities associated with permanent hiring.

Hence, you only pay for the talent you need, when you need it. Along with the reduced costs, you are more prepared to face market fluctuations than your competitors with rigid recruitment strategies.

Smaller businesses with lesser budgets often go through a major problem. At some point in business operations, they might require an expert’s opinion while crafting important strategies and decisions.

These problems are easily solvable in today’s time; thanks to the flexible solutions of the gig economy, remote work, paid consultancies, etc.

Founders and stakeholders can easily connect to a wide variety of capable professionals as and when required. Gaining fast and affordable access to specialist skills has never been easier.

Many companies may often feel the need for testing a fraction of candidates to see if they can eventually be brought in as permanent employees.

For the same purpose, contractors, as well as freelancers, provide flexible options such as test assignments, trialing temporary employees, etc.

These help the employers in making well-informed and reliable decisions for the long term.

Flexible staffing gifts you with the option of using temporary talent as a backup for your permanent staff. This helps in ensuring the continuity of work in cases such as the following:

a) an employee is unavailable (maternity leave, medical emergency, etc.)

b) a vacancy that needs time to be filled permanently

c) providing relief/ vacations/ decreased workload to a set of employees

Further, businesses can even shift their core staff’s focus from day-to-day tedious chores to more important and value-adding tasks.