The temporary employment services industry has changed dramatically in recent years. Today, for example, many temporary services not only screen employees before hiring them, they also check their references. Many provide training, at no cost, on current PC word processing and spreadsheet soft ware. They also provide informational seminars about the corporate culture employees will be working in, and tell them how to dress and how to comport themselves on the job. The importance of a positive attitude on the job is stressed. Temporary service companies also serve as consultants for clients who use their services.
In some cases, for example, a temporary service company will place a full-time representative on site for a client who requires a large number of employees during peak work periods. The representative will discuss the needs of the company, the work required, and how its temporary employees can do the job for the client in the fastest, most cost-efficient way.
Standards Are High
Temporary employment services are careful about the type of individuals they hire. The reason: They guarantee the quality of their services. If notified promptly, according to the Alexandria, Virginia, based National Association of Temporary Services (NATS), temporary employment services will not charge their customers for unsatisfactory work done by an employee and will replace the employee if necessary. Today’s temporary employment services develop working relationships with both their employees and their client companies because of repeat business and the fact that they rely on each other to achieve their goals.
As employers, according to NATS, temporary service companies "assume the obligations normally related to all employers and maintain this responsibility throughout the employment period."
The temporary employment services have a language of their own. The word "dispatch," for example, is generally used to refer to the act of assigning industrial temporary employees to report for work on customers' premises. "Job shop" is a colloquial term generally used to refer to businesses that supply longer-term temporary employees on a contract basis in technical or specialized areas such as engineering or drafting.
New Hiring Trend
There is also a growing nationwide trend toward using the skills of 50-plus professionals - including gold-collar workers, those 60 years and older who have retired and returned to the workplace. Chicago's ABLE (Ability Based on Long Experience) is one organization that helps older people find jobs.
Shirley Brussell, the 69-year-old executive director of operations, says ABLE's goal is to provide employment opportunities for adults 55 years or older, to counsel them, train and retrain them, and send them back to school if necessary.
ABLE was started in June 1977 and since that time has served more than 60,000 older workers and more than 5,000 employers in the Chicago metropolitan area.
"In the beginning," says Brussell, "there were a lot of fragmented efforts, none of which was coordinated with one body.
We at ABLE felt the need to start a clearinghouse to bind disparate agencies into one coordinated effort." Today more than 40 agencies are involved in senior employment in the ABLE network in the Chicago metropolitan area, plus a job hot-line telephone available to both older workers seeking employment and employers in need of personnel. The ABLE Chicago hotline number is 312-782-7700. This clearinghouse operation has multiple job listings that are based on job category and area, and links the 40 agencies in the network, ABLE provides executive, managerial, technical, secretarial, and blue-collar temporary help to employers seeking such skills in the Chicago area.
ABLE is unusual in that it is a nonprofit social agency, which was founded through the efforts of the Chicago Community Trust, a prestigious private foundation. It is supported by charitable trust funds, by grants, and by funds from individuals and the business community, including more than 50 corporate foundations, and the government.
In addition, ABLE operates a private temporary employment agency for persons 50 and older called APT (apt to fit your needs), which helps to finance the ABLE operation. According to Brussell, there are more than 70 on ABLE's staff, plus several hundred volunteers. "We have far more jobs than we can fill," she says. "We can't always get a good match.
But what we are proving is that young people and 50-plus older temps can work side-by-side and be simpatico."
