Recognising your colleagues and team members is a key part of employee engagement, and beyond that, employee advocacy. After all, in a time when candidates are in a strong position your employer brand matters. You want people to be sharing their positive experiences of what it is like to work for you.
You might already have an employee rewards programme in place. Maybe you have a ‘Colleague of the Month’ scheme or something similar to recognise team members who have gone the extra mile.
If you do have something in place, is this open to all employees, regardless of whether they are permanent or temporary colleagues?
The Importance of Looking After Temps
Temporary, contract or interim staff can be a core part of your organisation. They are the ones ready to jump in at short notice. They’re usually laser-focused on the project you need support with and typically, they are flexible and adaptable, willing to support you as and where needed.
However, temps are often overlooked when it comes to rewards. They may be with your organisation for the short-term, perhaps a 3-month contract covering Membership Renewals. Or maybe it’s longer-term maternity cover for 9 – 12 months. Since these colleagues are not necessarily viewed as permanent fixtures, they can be overlooked when it comes to rewards.
Looking after your temps is crucial. Quite simply, if you look after your temps, they will look after you.
There are multiple reasons to look after your contract and interim workers, not least because it’s a decent, human thing to do! The temporary and contracting world can be quite small, especially specialist temps who work in the membership sector. The last thing you want is negative press about how you treat temporary staff. People talk and, unfortunately, criticism spreads more quickly than praise.
If you look after your temps, they are also more inclined to return to your organisation. Many contractors have carved a career out of project work. They might be specialists in both their discipline and in the membership sector or, quite simply, temporary work might suit their lifestyle. When you need repeat cover isn’t it reassuring knowing that someone who has delivered for you in the past can step up to the plate again.
Our Temp of the Year
This is the part where we sing our praises a little. In essence, it’s a case study into how we look after our temporary workers at Membership Bespoke. We recognise that whilst the temps and contractors we place actually work in your organisation, they are essentially operating through us as their recruiter.
It’s imperative to us that we treat our temps as well as our potential permanent candidates. The candidate experience holds just as much importance. Communication is as critical, often more so given the short time scales involved in temporary recruitment. In recognition of how we work with our temporary candidates and clients, we were thrilled to win Best Interim Recruitment Organisation at the recent UK Enterprise Awards.
In addition to winning this award, we wanted to recognise our temps who went above and beyond in the last 12 months. We created our ‘Temp of the Year’ scheme last year so we could give something back rather than just a ‘thank you’ to our temps.
There was no question that our Temp of the Year would be Holly Atkinson. Holly worked for the charity arm of an International Membership Body. She was consistently reliable, always receptive and pleasant to deal with, plus she gained excellent feedback from our client.
Holly’s ethos and spirit embody everything we look for in a temp. She was hard-working, proactive with her work - getting stuck into projects from the first day, plus she fully stepped into the spirit of the charity she represented. Holly worked for this membership organisation throughout the pandemic and had previous membership sector experience. It was this grounding that made her integral to the charity’s success actually helping it grow during a time when most causes were struggling.
This is an example of one of the long-term temps we have placed, and Holly will likely return to the organisation as soon as circumstances allow. There’s no question that she will be welcomed back openly, and of course, we’re delighted to keep our relationship with her.
If you can emulate this approach when working with your temps and interim workers, then you are on the right track. As we have said before, we’re not shy about repeating – if you look after your temps, they will look after you.
To find out more about temporary staff for the membership sector, contact our team today.