Forties People

With the Internet, newspapers and associated media full of adverts for cheap flights and holiday packages, you and your staff will start to make summer holiday plans in the next few weeks and it's vital that you nagging doubts about being able to continue as normal with a skeleton staff remain unfounded.

With Forties People recruiting your summer temp staff, we will make sure that the smooth continuation of your business during the ‘quiet' summer months is hassle-free and straight forward, but read the following hints to make sure you're on top of what you need to be doing.

1. Make sure you've planned well in advance - Robust forward planning is vital to the running of any business, but none more so that the preparation and training of temp staff. If your secretarial and administration staff are taking staggered breaks, we can arrange for one temp to cover all positions, thereby offering you continuity and familiarity with your product or service, making them more effective.
2. What exactly do you need cover for? - Making sure the phones are answered and directed, the post is sorted and delivered and your emails are responded to in a timely fashion is one thing, but tying up deals and talking to strategic partners and clients is something very different. You can't expect a temp to have the business acumen and product or service knowledge to do the latter, so you need to prioritise what's important in the immediate term, and what can wait until you get back.
   
   Good communication with your colleagues, business partners and clients is vital to ensure that the deals you put into place before you leave are still there on your return.
3. Make sure your employees are aware of their duties - With a smaller workforce, it may be that you have to ask certain employees to cover certain tasks they wouldn't normally be asked to perform, such as filing, ordering stock, sending out deliveries etc. If you make sure they are trained and proficient on any mechanical or computerised systems they may need to use, you can go away safe in the knowledge that your business will remain operating at its optimum level.
4. Have back-up you can trust - Regardless of the size of your business or that you're used to making all the key decisions that affect the business yourself, make sure you have a trusted and reliable second-in-command whom you can, if necessary, delegate responsibility to.
5. Use your recruitment company properly - With summer traditionally being one of the busiest times of the year for the recruitment industry, we believe wholeheartedly in the development of close and long-term relationships with our clients. This gives us the ability to foresee potential staffing requirements for certain companies we have previously worked closely with and prioritise accordingly. In addition to this, we are not just there to fulfil your staffing needs; we are an invaluable source of advice and information on all aspects of employment. If there's something you need to know, or a piece of new legislation you don't understand, just ask.
6. Learn from your temporary staff - While it's easy to think that temporary reception, admin or secretarial staff will quietly get on with the work asked of them, it's entirely likely that they will have some good ideas about the business and may even offer suggestions on how to makes certain aspects of the company more efficient. An additional benefit of using temporary staff is that you have the ability to ‘trial' them with a view to growing your workforce in the future.
7. Get the candidates you want, not the ones you don't - If you plan sufficiently far ahead, you will get the candidates who have the attributes and personality you are looking for. Panic recruitment at the last minute may well get you someone who can do the job, but may not be perfectly matched in terms of their overall skill-set or personality.

For further information, and to plan for your summer recruitment, please call the specialists at Forties People on 020 7329 4044, or visit us online at www.fortiespeople.com.