Temporary employees can be an excellent addition to your workforce, as long as you make them feel included. In order to utilize them to their full potential, it’s essential to build strong relationships with each one of them.

If you focus on issues and concerns important to your temporary employees, they’ll feel valued, contribute more and speak highly to others about your organization.

1. Seek out ways to relate to them.

Temporary workers come from different backgrounds and career paths. To optimize their engagement and satisfaction, you need to look for ways to relate to them.

• Find out what each individual hopes to get out of their current role. This will help you connect to their ambitions and goals, and keep them motivated by matching them to the right projects.

2. Treat them the same as your regular employees.

The leading complaint companies have about temporary employees is they’re not as driven to succeed as their full-time counterparts. Take note of the subtleties and treat them the same as their peers.

• Stay in touch with their attitude toward the job. Get to know them and show you care about them as people, not just workers who are filling a temporary void.

3. Show your appreciation.

To ensure that temps feel like part of the team and give 100 percent effort, make a sincere effort to show them your appreciation.

• Recognize their work appropriately. This may come in the form of a shout-out during a staff meeting, the option to work flexible hours or a half-day off on Fridays. Whatever you choose, make it work for everyone. And, make it meaningful.

4. Ask for feedback.

Give temporary employees opportunities for their voices to be heard. This benefits you, as well as them, as they can provide an outsider’s perspective on plans, issues and problems. They can be a great source of best practice ideas for continued improvement.

• Have an open-door policy. If any employees come to you with ideas, suggestions or complaints, keep your relationships with them strong by being accessible and actively listening. Include them in important decisions whenever possible.

5. Be fair and honest.

Regardless of whether an employee is temporary or permanent, honesty is always the best policy. Lying results in a collapse of trust. Even when it’s difficult, bite the bullet and tell the truth.

• Don’t show favoritism. Nothing creates more dissatisfaction within a workplace. Enforce rules uniformly, and try to maintain a positive attitude yourself, across the board.

Need help hiring?

Frontline Source Group can help you hire the best temporary – as well as project and permanent – employees in accounting, finance, administration, CSR, engineering, oil and gas, healthcare and nursing, and executive and clerical roles. Give us a call today to learn more.