Day laborers

Christine M

Has anyone had any experience in developing a flexible workforce? The nature of our business fluctuates greatly and a senior manager has asked that I work at building a flexible workforce that is either already trained (i.e., retired workers) or can be trained and brought in as needed.

I am trying to be open-minded on the idea, but I can't visualize a large enough pool of trained people being willing to work a day or a week at a time to make a difference. As I would like to support the needs of the organization, I would love for someone out there to contradict me.

The idea would be that we would have a pool of workers that we could call and ask for them to come in for a day or a few days and out of twenty calls, maybe we would get a few to come.

I know that there are day labor centers, but a transient workforce is not what he is looking for, he wants a group of repeat workers that can be trained and ready to come in to work on call.

ritaanz

It will depend on your location. If the company is located in a densely populated area with a high percentage of unskilled labor, the concept can work. Where is the company located?

WITracy

We have a pool of "casual" employees. They are hired with the understanding that they will work on an as needed basis and they are not guaranteed any hours. The flip side of that is they do not have to report when we ask -- they can decline the hours if they are busy. For our workflow, this arrangement works great. The majority of the casuals are mom's whose kids are in school and need a flexible schedule.

Although this arrangement has worked well for us, I would not recommend going this route. After a slow year and no work for the causals for several months, we started getting unemployment claims. After much discussion with the UI office, I was informed that regardless of the agreement regarding work schedule and hours, if we paid the employee, we are liable for unemployment. I wrongly assumed that if it was mutually agreed upon that there were no guaranteed hours, we were off the hook for UI. Lesson learned!