California Staffing Professionals CSP Group News | LinkedIn.
In the movie Fight Club, Edward Norton’s character comes to view people he meets on airplanes “single serving friends” because he’ll never see them again. USA Today’s Article “Quarter of workforce could become temps as contract work grows” predicts a full 25% of the workforce in the country will be temporary workers of some sort within the next few years.
As someone who has been a contractor/temporary worker, I have adopted the view of Ed Norton’s character. Yes, contractors work as hard as employees, but they are outsiders no matter what. This is the good news and the bad news.
On the upside, everyone gets to try before they buy into committing to full time employment. This is a godsend in those special circumstances when you find out your employer belongs on Voldemort’s team in the fight of good vs. evil, or your boss only hires yes-men and women to the team full time. Shew! No loss there. And in the professional realms of contracting, the pay is usually 10-25% better to compensate for the downsides.
On the downside, the temporary part of the deal is a glaring reminder of how temporary employment can be. With all of the layoffs that have happened in the last 30 years, you’d think that people would generally be more prepared anyway, but for contractors the stress of knowing it’s going to end soon can be altogether too much. Not to mention there’s no company benefits on the temporary ride. Sometimes the agency offers benefits, but mostly not and they tend to be spendy with less-than fantastic coverage.
But there’s hope at the end of this post, as I am ever an optimist, especially when it comes to employment issues. To be a successful contractor, one only needs to keep a steady head and find a perspective that works to keep the stress monsters away. For starters, start thinking of jobs as rental properties as opposed to families. As a renter, you don’t generally get too attached to a house, though you’re usually quite content as you know that should it ever go “bad”, you can just move.
Another way is to adopt the perspective of Ed Norton’s character and consider each job a single serving of employment. There’s nothing wrong with individually wrapped cookies, sodas or single slices of pizza. They are all delicious in their single-serving way. And we have no trouble at all appreciating the single serving (travel) sized items that get us through our trips with a disproportionate amount of assistance for their size.
It’s our expectations that make or break the experience. Contracting is not less-than, nor is it a sentence to be endured. The jobs can be all of the things they are as full time positions: fun, horrid, educational, challenging, miserable and wonderful. The one thing they do for sure is help to pay the bills. So if you find yourself in a temporary assignment unexpectedly, don’t despair! There’s a whole world of contractors out there and if the predictions are correct, we’ll see better benefits and a whole host of new services and providers to make the experiences better and easier.
Do you think the USA Today article is correct in its prediction or do you think the market will straighten out and go back to business as usual before reaching 25%?
Thanks to Michelle Baker of Pro Tem Solutions for sharing the article on LinkedIn today.
