Q&A - Why do businesses employ temporary workers?

Whether hired on fixed-term contracts or not, temporary employees are particularly useful if the business has seasonal peaks and troughs in workload. Temporary workers also enable a business to fill short-term gaps, for example caused by illness or maternity leave.

Temporary employees are often not directly employed by the business they work for. A common arrangement is for the “temp” to be employed by an employment agency (“temping agency”) that then bills the business for whom the service is being provided.

The main upsides and downsides of using “temps” can be summarised as follows: