Making that End-of-Summer Job Offer

Making that End-of-Summer Job Offer

If you’re lucky, after a summer of working with temporary help, you’re left with a few good employees you’d like to ask to stay on permanently. If you’ve got the budget and have enough work for them to do in the fall and beyond, this is absolutely a great place to find your next employees.

The Perks of Transitioning Temp Staff to Permanent

You’ve already done the hard work in searching for, hiring, and training your staff, so that leaves less on your plate. You’ll even save money, since you won’t be taking out any ads for hiring this season.

You already know these employees do a great job, otherwise you wouldn’t be considering bringing them on long-term. They have worked with the rest of your team, so they know how to get along with everyone.

From the employees’ point of view, they already know how your company works, and what’s required to please the boss.

It makes sense to offer your excelling summer staff a place on your permanent team.

Things to Consider

Now that you’ve resolved to make one or more temp employees a more permanent offer, realize you don’t know their intentions. They may not be interested in continuing to work for you, or may be headed to college in the fall. You’ve got a few strategies you can use here to entice them to stay:

• Offer a pay increase
• Be flexible, and allow them to work around their class schedule

Once summer’s over, your employment needs may change. Whereas you may have a steady stream of customers coming in during those hot months, business may trickle slower in the fall. Make sure you can justify hiring anyone, given your expected cash flow. Consider these solutions:

• Hire several people for a few hours of work a week. This gives you more backup staff for when others call in sick.
• Offer a three-month contract, so you can get out of it if finances don’t support your hiring.

And with that slow in traffic to your business, you may need staff to take on different responsibilities. Perhaps this summer, Johnny worked as a lifeguard at your hotel’s pool. But now you need him to work the front desk. Make sure it’s a good fit to move an employee from one part of your business to another, then ensure your success:

• Cross train summer staff to learn multiple functions so they can be useful in different areas of your business.
• Ask what they’re interested in learning.

Summer is a splendid time to weed out the gems on your temporary team and cultivate their skills for the long haul.