Why now is right time to build a temporary worker talent pool and how to do it

With skills shortages remaining chronic for many sectors within the UK economy, there has been a growing focus on the use of talent pools alongside traditional recruitment activity to help meet new hiring requirements for many businesses and organisations.

Of course, the concept of talent pools isn't new – they have been around for many years within the permanent recruitment arena.?What is new is the growing trend to start to build talent pools as an additional route to resource temporary or contractor workers.

Whilst some sectors have established strategies in place already (such as parts of the NHS and the care sector with the use of bank staff), in the main the approach to temporary talent pools for most organisations has often been informal.?

Its often been the individual initiative of hiring managers building excel spreadsheets of potential candidates or knowing specific freelancers who they can recommend for roles.?To date, it’s simply not been an area of strategic focus to date for most organisations.

The argument to why look to new thinking is being driven by the increased use of temporary workers by many organisations in today’s skills short market.?

In additional to the requirements of covering seasonal peaks in workload, specific project work or long-term illnesses – there is also a growing requirement to cover for increasing numbers of unfilled permanent vacancies.?

In addition, many organisations who source temporary workers or freelancers themselves directly via agencies have found its become more time consuming and expensive to engage with multiple suppliers as they have to work ever harder to try to find available candidates.?

There clearly has to be a level of temporary agency worker use to merit the focus but with the advent of new technology, the business case for developing a temporary worker talent pool strategy for many organisations is now growing.?

In terms of defining what a temporary worker talent pool is – its typically made up of candidates who have either worked for an organisation in the past and / or want to be considered for future opportunities. This could include contractors, previous temp workers, early retirees and candidates who have applied for permanent roles but would consider temporary roles.

There are numerous benefits to developing a talent pool to sit along side other temporary or contingent recruitment activity.?In simple terms having more candidates to access helps reduce both the time to resource workers and the recruitment costs of temp workers supplied by agencies (typically by 20 – 30%).?In addition, it can also improve retention as temporary workers are more likely to be invested (and prepared) to work for an organisation that they are already engaged with.???

One of the perceived barriers to building a talent pool is that it can be a time-consuming process that requires a degree of preparation, coordination and resource for it to grow. The reality is that you will probably need centralised plan that will involve coordination across HR, marketing and operational colleagues but using the same principles applied to building a permanent talent pool it can be done effectively with the right approach.

A system and process is required to ‘capture’ potential temporary candidates, register their details and then engage with them (which has to be a much more compelling approach than merely ‘are you available for a role’).

It’s the ongoing development of technology which is enabling these processes to be tackled more cost effectively and to be streamlined into day-to-day activity. There are standalone solutions but increasingly they are being built into other applications including staff rota and shift management systems.

Here at Matrix , a key part of our solution as a Managed Service Provider for temporary worker provision is to build our customers temporary talent pools into all of our solutions that can be called upon as a first port of call or alongside the agency supply chain when recruiting for a new role.?

We work in partnership with Alvius using their market leading Talent Pooling System (TPS) across our UK customers, with a target to fill at least 10% of roles via their temporary talent pool in the first year of operation and then building up from there. We are not only saving costs and improving fulfilment but also improving their brand and presence as an employer of choice.

With there being no let up in the competition for skills, building a talent pool can provide a competitive advantage in both resourcing and retaining temporary and contingent workers. With the software technology now readily available, its something that should be a strategic consideration for any organisation that regularly uses volumes of temporary workers as a way to off set some the challenges in today’s market.?

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