Temporary work can be a permanent solution

The market for temporary employees in Poland is booming. While in 2001 only 31,000 Poles found employment through temporary work agencies, in 2005 the number was over 220,000. The Association of Temporary Work Agencies (ZAPT) estimates that the number should grow by between 20-25 percent this year. "Temporary work agencies will provide work for 270,000 people this year," personnel director at Randstad, Agnieszka Bulik, predicts. ZAPT estimates that the value of the market exceeded zł.1.5 billion in 2005, up from around zł.1 billion the previous year.

Battling unemployment
Although Poland already has the fourth-largest number of people temporarily employed in the EU, in terms of percentage of the population, Poland is still far behind the EU average. Temps make up just 0.4 percent of all working Poles, while the block's average is 1.2 percent and in the UK the figure is over five  percent.

"Temporary work is an alternative to stable, long-term employment. It gives the employee a chance to gain experience and get some employee social benefits," Bulik underlined, adding: "Temporary-work agencies are an important element in the fight against unemployment." She underlined that 51 percent of all temporarily employed persons in Poland are those who were unemployed for a long period of time, and 50 percent are age 25 and younger. What's more, she stressed that temporary work is a chance for those with low qualifications. "Twenty-nine percent of those with vocational education take up temporary job offers," Bulik said.

The president of Impel HR Service, Grzegorz Tyszka, points to a number of advantages of hiring workers on temporary contracts. "The temporary-work agency provides the workers immediately," he says. In many production companies, where production levels vary from season to season, the demand for extra labor can arise from day to day. The company can't afford to lose time and money to conduct its own search for workers.

Test case
Tyszka also says that many entrepreneurs want to test a potential employee before signing a contract with him. "It's very popular to hire a person temporarily in that case, and if he doesn't meet the requirements you can get rid of him easily," he explained. Firing personnel working on a temporary basis is much easier, the notice period for a person working for up to two weeks is only two days, while for someone hired for more than two weeks is 14 days. "Also, the employer doesn't have to worry about holidays," Tyszka adds. It is the agency which gives the employee vacation time, and the agency also has to provide the client company with another worker while the original employee is on holiday. 

Although Tyszka says that most temps are hired to fill positions of a lower or middle rank, he notices a growing interest among companies for hiring senior managers on a temporary basis. "Sometimes during a transition period companies hire whole management boards," says Tyszka.

One issue limiting the growth of the market is the time limit set on temporary work. A temporary employee cannot work for one company for longer than 12 months within a period of 36 months. "There are no such limits in other EU countries, and unemployment is lower there and temporary-work markets are booming," Bulik said. "Every person who gets work is a relief not only for the household but also for the economy," she concluded.