It’s a problem we’re finding ourselves faced with more and more frequently. One of our Weployers hires a Weployee through the platform for a few hours, a couple of weeks or months, and like Kate Winslet to a slowly, tragically dying Leonardo di Caprio hanging onto a fragment of the majestic Titanic vessel in the North Atlantic Ocean - they just can’t let go. Our pool of Weployees are so talented, the teams of people they work with often find they have made themselves indispensable, and they come to us time and time again crying: “I just can’t let my Weployee go!”
Because we’ve had a little practise with this process, we thought we’d layout the process required to take your temporary worker to a full time employee and explain a little more about why some businesses today are factoring this into their wider recruitment strategy for all new hires.
Common Short Term and Temporary Staff Scenarios
The top five areas employers typically hire for seasonal or temporary help include Retail (33%), Customer Service (31%), Administrative and Clerical Support (17%), Shipping and Delivery (12%), and Hospitality (10%). But why stop there? You might discover that your new Marketing Weployee is an absolute gun at sourcing imagery and has been effectively building your company following on Social Media. Perhaps there’s a Finance Weployee who has made several efficiencies in the way your Finance Department has been processing Invoices or has shaved hours of work off your standard payroll procedure. Slowly, you realise what an asset they would be to your full time team and you’re keen for them to come on board permanently.
Benefits of Converting Short Term to Full Time Staff
Hiring a temporary staff member is a great way to source talent quickly for a short-term period or for project based work, but if the talent is good enough - this can be a clever way to “Try before you buy”. Engaging with a Weployee temporarily, means you have the luxury of being able to end the contract whenever you like, without the legal permutations associated with full time staff, and the hiring risk therefore, is mitigated. In fact, a recent study shows that more than nine in 10 Aussie hiring managers (92%) say they would hire an employee for a permanent position who has been performing continuous temporary/contract work. Furthermore, more than eight in 10 (88%) would extend a permanent contract to a skilled employee who was initially hired on a temporary basis. The benefits continue:
Avoiding termination and unemployment costs for employees who are not converted to permanent. With a temporary to permanent arrangement, there’s an opportunity for the position to become permanent – not a guarantee. That means that if the company’s needs change after the temporary period, the employee is not eligible to make claims such as wrongful termination or to file an unemployment claim against the employer. In other words, it’s a strategy with less risk compared to hiring a full-time employee from the start.
Reducing the cost of benefits. The Weployee hourly fee includes Superannuation, Payroll Tax, Work Cover, our service fee and the Weployee hourly rate according to the award rates in their specific role and state. But by engaging a Weployee for a short term period, the company can save on other benefits offered to full-time employees during that same time period, including paid time off (vacation and sick leave), medical and dental benefits, and retirement packages.
Statistics from the global Recruiting Benchmarking Tool Workably reveal that the average time to hire for an Administrative/HR role in Australia is 20 days - a significant cost to the business. Outsourcing the hiring process and leveraging the vetting process Weploy has already done by the time your Weployee walks through the door, which includes 6 stages, cognitive and psychometric testing, is a smart way to ease the strain on the business and save time for the day to day.
No matter how skilled a candidate is, qualifications are no guarantee they are the right fit for your working environment. It can take just one “bad egg” to turn the whole batch sour and sometimes, by the time you’ve discovered a new staff member is a “problem employee”, (Or - has tendencies to claim other people’s work as their own, underperform or foster negativity) it can be too late. Employing a temporary staff member for a specific project is an efficient way to scope out their working style with your other employees and test if they are amicable, collaborative, and harmonious with the existing full timers. If your Weployee has become an essential part of your team, and would be happy to accept a full time role, don’t let them fade away like Leo did. Make them permanent following a few simple steps!
How to Convert a Contract Employee to Permanent
- You engage with your employee. At Weploy, this means creating a Weployer account, posting a job on the platform and your contractor (or "Weployee") begins their engagement.
- The occasion arises for a permanent role, and you've been so impressed with your temp, you decide to make them an offer.
- Once the employee has accepted the Permanent role offer, a buy-out price is usually applicable, containing a once-off conversion fee. This fee is calculated differently depending on what platform or agency you choose, but at Weploy the fee is based on hours the Weployee has already worked and is reflected in this buyout schedule.
- The buyout fee is paid, and the official permanent start date is confirmed and new contract signed
- At Weploy, each temp staff member that leave the platform goes through an off boarding process and undergoes an Exit interview. Following this, the contract with Weploy is terminated.
- The candidate starts as a permanent employee of the company that offered them the role.
- The conversion fee is billed.
- Weployees who have been 'bought out' by our clients or Weployers, join our Weploy Alumni.
The Temporary to Permanent Employee Conversion Process as a Hiring Strategy
Some roles are truly temporary, lasting a defined amount of time without the opportunity for the position to become permanent. But the temporary to permanent conversion process as a wider hiring strategy is beneficial for both Employers and Employees alike. If you can engage with a skilled temp staff member through the Weploy platform, allow them to experience the work, and integrate with your team members to understand if they are a good fit for your company seems to be a smart and strategic practise that more of our clients are trialling to help them scale up or down more efficiently and allow them to mitigate the risk from their full-time hires
