Day laborers
Christine M
66 Posts
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.
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.
Comments
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!