Short-Term Hire, Long-Term Gain: Rethinking the Role of Temps
When most hiring managers think about temporary recruitment, it’s usually in response to an emergency: someone’s off sick, a project is stalling, or there's been a last minute resignation out of the blue. It’s a knee-jerk hire. Get someone in. Keep things moving. Fix it later.
But temporary recruitment, when done well, isn’t a quick fix, it’s a smart, strategic investment. And if you’re not factoring temps into your workforce planning, especially in spaces like Finance and HR, where absences and shock resignations can stop things in their tracks, you could be missing out on serious long-term value.
Let’s break down why.
- Cost Isn’t Just About Salary
Yes, day rates can look high. But, compare this to the true cost of leaving a role unfilled: overtime and burnout for everyone else, missed deadlines, dropped balls and disappointed customers and clients - a temp can be far more cost-effective.
Unlike permanent hires, temps don’t come with long onboarding periods, benefits packages, and six month learning curves. You're paying for someone who’s ready to go from day one.
Doing nothing will cost you, and that cost will often outweigh the cost of a high-performing temp. Every day you don’t have someone in that key finance role, the ripple effects can build: you have delayed invoices, compliance risk is increased, your staff are unsupported and projects are put on the back burner. Your best people will usually end up picking up the slack, and this will inevitably lead to burnout.
- Business Agility Demands It
Hiring permanent staff is time-consuming, for lots of people, particularly in stretched or cautious markets. But the commercial demands of your business sometimes won’t wait.
A strategic temp hire allows you to react quickly to change: cover unexpected absences, backfill someone leaving the business, or bring in a specialist skillset for a short, high-impact period. Think about transformation projects – there are so many times in these big periods of change where another pair of hands for a fortnight would be invaluable. What about year-end crunch time? It’s always all hands on deck, and sometimes, there aren’t enough of them! These can be make-or-break moments, and a temp can often be the difference between success and slippage.
- Trial Without the Gamble
In some cases, hiring a temp is a great way to test the waters. You can assess someone’s performance, team fit, and business need before committing to a permanent contract. In sectors like Finance, where roles can evolve quickly, that kind of flexibility is invaluable.
It’s not uncommon for our temp placements to go permanent. But the key is that when they do, it’s based on proof, not just a polished CV or a good interview.
- Talent You Won’t Find on the Open Market
Here’s a little industry truth: some of the best candidates out there only work on an interim basis. They love project work, transformation, crisis management - and they’re not browsing job boards for perm roles. These are professionals with deep experience and strong commercial acumen; someone who can parachute in, steady the ship, and leave your team stronger than they found it.
If you’re only hiring permanent candidates, you’re not accessing these people who could change the game.
- Temps Can Be a Culture Add, Not Just a Seat Filler
The myth that temps are “less committed” or “just there to plug a gap” needs to quit. So many of our interim and temporary placements leave a lasting impact on the business: they bring in new processes, they teach perm staff skills they didn’t know they needed, and they challenge stale ways of working. If you’re clear on what your expectations are, and you treat them as part of the team, they’ll often exceed what you thought you’d brought them in to do.
What It Means for You
Temporary recruitment shouldn’t be about patching holes - it’s about building in resilience. And when you work with a recruiter who understands your business: where your pressures are, what your long-term plans are, and what your pain points are, a temp can become a long-term win, not a short-term fix.
If you’re still treating temp recruitment as a last resort, it might be time to rethink. Because the businesses that get the best out of temps don’t use them as a quick solution – they plan them in.
Need to build flexibility into your finance team? Let’s talk about what’s possible and how a strategic temp hire might be exactly what you need. Call the team today.
