The HR fraternity in India is undergoing massive transformation with impending trends like e-recruitments, outsourcing HR functions, and the like. In the same vein, temporary staffing is gaining recognition across industries.

Temporary staffing or temping, in business parlance, is around a 5 billion dollar industry. The approximate number of temps in India would be around 100.4 million out of which 5% are in the organized sector and the remaining 95 percent are a part of the unorganized sector. Temporary staffing involves the placement of people for non-permanent employment needs; the duration of the placement may have specific parameters or be undefined. Temping, as the name suggests, is the process of hiring temporary workers or temps, for a shorter duration of time for a particular project and the employment with the company lasts till the completion of the project. The temps work for one company while being on rolls of a third party. A temp is a contract worker who is being hired for a short time, typically till a project lasts. The contract ranges from a period of 3 months to 18 months.

A temp staffing company provides a wide range of temporary staffing solutions including temporary-to-permanent services, wherein the company hires an employee for trial basis and absorbs him/her within the company on the basis of his/her performance; and long-term contracts where temps are hired for a longer period of time which may be 2 years and above.

Why temping?

Temping can happen across industries, but temping jobs are increasing in human capital intensive businesses like banking, financial services, insurances, FMCG, retail and consumer durables industry period. Much of temping happens at the base level of the skill spectrum, such as data operations, accounts, sales, back-end operations, administration and marketing. But the temping trend is slowly catching on in the middle level too.

Organizations opt for temps primarily to reduce internal hiring costs and converting fixed costs to variable costs. While the overall time to hire the required number of employees reduces, it also helps free the HR manager from daily processes.