The Challenge of Seasonal Employees
As the seasons change, many people start to think about vacations and maybe taking things a little easier. For anyone involved in hiring and managing seasonal employees, though, that’s the time that things heat up in more ways than one.
Agricultural concerns, hotels, restaurants, resorts, theme parks, golf courses and a host of other industries depend on a high volume of seasonal labor, most of which must be recruited, on-boarded, trained and deployed anew each year, only to be offloaded a few months later. For managers, recruiters, and in-house HR personnel, it is usually a tiresome, time-consuming and costly annual ritual that becomes a little bit more difficult each year: Changes in local, state, and federal regulations and tax law, in particular, must be reviewed and accommodated. In many cases, the costs of recruitment continually rise, even as the available pool of credible, qualified recruits diminishes. That puts dents in productivity, profitability, and efficiency.
Each new, unproven seasonal employee also poses some significant risks: at the time of hire, ethics and performance are unknowns. To mitigate these effects, companies can be tempted to limit – or eliminate – seasonal staff, or to keep on employees on the payroll after their utility has passed. While a measure of risk may be averted, it’s a virtual certainty that business performance is compromised.
For PEOs, the challenge of seasonal employees is an opportunity to shine. It makes perfect sense: The HR tasks that most companies struggle with are a matter of daily routine to a well-run, high-functioning PEO, and there is little difficulty in administering them for seasonal personnel. As in other industries, HR processes can be managed much more expeditiously and economically by a good PEO.
More and more companies are becoming aware of the PEO’s utility in minimizing the pain of seasonal employment. In particular, the hospitality and resort industries are proving to be especially fertile ground for PEO growth. At Trion, we’ve witnessed the evolution of businesses’ thinking on this issue firsthand: Companies are increasingly realizing that the effort, costs, and risks associated with seasonal hiring can be mitigated with a scalable, pay as you go solution by choosing the right PEO partner to handle it for them.
Not all PEOs have chosen to focus on serving seasonal enterprises – and some haven’t figured out how to do so effectively. For our part, we’ve made seasonal employers a key segment within the industries we serve, and have developed specialized processes suited to their unique needs, and we work collaboratively with clients to develop customized programs aligned with their specific business’s objectives. It’s a formula that has added up to success for many of the companies we work with. We’d be happy to explore your specific seasonal employment needs with you.