Volume 4, Issue 2
With the onset of summer 2025, Tom’s Take returns with his insights from the recently released report, The Voice of the American Workforce. Now in its 19th edition, Employbridge interviews thousands of supply chain industry workers in the distribution, manufacturing and transportation fields for insights and data related to the temporary and flexible workforces.
A Path to Full-Time Employment
Knowing that temporary work is not always their primary choice, offering a path to full-time employment is an enticing factor in selecting temporary work when these conditions exist:
- The opportunity to gain added work experience to differentiate themselves from their peers.
- Temporary work is viewed as a stepping stone to permanent employment status.
- Learn new skills to differentiate themselves from their peers.
Competitive Benefits to Counter the Instability of Temporary Work
Stability and job security outweigh pay as barriers to accepting temporary work since most hourly workers want to work full-time. A competitive benefits package, like what they would be offered as a full-time associate, is one way to build loyalty within this group of workers with the top three ranked benefits, other than pay, being:
- Paid Time Off (PTO)
- Paid Holidays
- Participation in the company 401(k) with company match
Flexible Schedules and Pay Frequency
Seventy-five percent of hourly workers ranked day shift work as their top preference, followed by nights, overnights and weekends. As part of flexible scheduling, workers are attracted to jobs that allow for the opportunity to use the first two or the last two hours of a shift to tend to personal needs, such as attending a doctor’s appointment, without violating company attendance policies.
In addition to flexible working hours, hourly workers prefer jobs that pay on a weekly basis. This can be a competitive advantage to attracting talent over bi-weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly pay options.
Tom’s Take – “The documented insights and year-over-year variances provided by Employbridge and summarized above are a valuable source of information for companies that offer temporary or flexible working opportunities. This is especially relevant to those that are dependent on a large ramp-up of associates for the all-important Q4 seasonal period that could begin as early as August when inventory levels begin to build prior to the holiday shopping season.”
Learn how enVista can help address key supply chain challenges, such as labor, inventory and growth. Let’s have a conversation.®
