The use of temporary work has increased massively in Switzerland in recent years. Since the early 1990s, its share in the volume of work has increased more than fivefold. The construction industry plays a central role in this: According to current studies, about 24 per cent of all temporary employees work in the construction industry, whereas only about seven per cent of all employed persons work in the construction industry. Overall, about 10 per cent of employees in the main construction industry are temporary, and in peak season months the share of temporary workers can be as high as 20 per cent.
The advantages of using temporary employees are obvious: employees are available quickly and flexibly as needed, the duration of employment is limited and thus possible in relation to orders and projects, and the notice periods in the first three months are very short. Temporary workers can thus achieve a high degree of flexibility in terms of staff and working hours, which is particularly helpful in cushioning fluctuating order situations and in coping with recurring peaks in workload.
In addition to the general organisation of temporary employees, the question arises as to how they can best be integrated into deployment and capacity planning. For this purpose, there are some special options in our resource planning tool Vanillaplan that make planning with temporary workers particularly uncomplicated.
For example, when creating staff resources in our software, there is a temporary field that you can select with a tick. This allows you to see directly in your planning views if employees are temporarily employed. In addition, the actual length of employment can be set in the Resource Allocation view. In this way, temporary employees are only displayed and included in the resource and capacity planning during their actual period of employment.
Another variant is to create placeholders for temporary employees. The idea behind this method is that in the case of frequently changing temporary employees, a new resource does not have to be entered each time and the required temporary employees can also be allocated in advance. This way, even before a suitable employee is found, the capacity planning for the respective week is correct.
To do this, you simply create a new resource and name it, for example, as MA temporary. In the shift planning, this employee can then be used as needed to act as a placeholder for a concrete temporary employee. On days when no temporary employees are needed, these placeholders can be set to absent. As soon as the right employee has been found for the placeholder, important information such as name or telephone number can easily be added as a note for the assignment.