Conor:
Companies, even those which use agencies a lot, will always have a core amount of drivers that they employ fulltime enough to meet the minimum workload of the business.
A very small core in certain circumstances. Our place has 80+ drivers of which only 5 are permanent staff, the rest are agency, some of which have been going in there for over 20 years! I can’t understand the logic in it tbh as the wage bill must be significantly higher than employing a larger core number.
They have however advertised for six permanent positions, which is the first time they’ll have employed directly since the 1990’s.
There seems to be a greater fear from emloyers in having full time staff scratching their arses - than over-paying for “temps” during the upsurges in business.
It does seem a daft thing to do in a rising economy doesn’t it?
Perhaps there are still plenty of employers who think the next economic cliff to fall off of is “just around the corner”?
Low Business Confidence I believe it’s called…
I think its swings and roundabouts, will chop and change depending on driver demand.
Likes of big supermarkets the agency only make at times a £1 per hour but rely on the fact getting 30+ drivers a day. The supermarkets etc… see it as cheap staff, can cancel last minute etc… replace easily, can bar off site for little or no reason. But the other side of that is, driver is temp might not really care, so can tell them where to go.
Seen it in Sains used to do trunking for them, but sometimes they would want you to do shops, never really bothered me because always got a one or two hitter Aberdeen or somewhere else miles away still getting 12hr shift and bit of a change. But more than a few drivers would just walk out the door refuse to do it. Or situation where likes of summer fruits is really busy or Xmas rush and a load of the agency staff vanish to go do that to make more money and other places cant get drivers.
Then suddenly find companies wanting to employ staff, problem with that is maybe find job only lasts a few months and would have made more money and had more flexibility staying with an agency.
The big advantages of companies using agency drivers are as follows: no holiday pay to worry about. No sick pay to bother with. No Ni payments to government. No pension contributions and in hard times no redundancy to pay. Most agencies charge 10%-20% on top of annual salary roughly £1 per hour on top of your wage. My mate just bought a laptop and mobile and is looking to set one up lol.