Social Work and Education are two sectors that require a high degree of professionalism and competence from all employees. Social Workers and Teachers naturally have incredibly important jobs to do, so it’s essential to source the best candidates for your organisation.
Although there are benefits to having a permanent workforce, it’s also worth exploring the benefits that locum workers can provide. Many of these benefits relate to flexibility and convenience, as well as the individual advantages that experienced employees naturally bring into their roles.
Quickly Fill Vacancies
It’s not always easy to find perfect candidates to fill open vacancies at your organisation. These searches can take several weeks or even months to complete, leaving gaps in your workforce in the meantime. These gaps not only burden the existing workforce who must pick up the slack but can compromise the quality of the overall service you provide.
In the case of the Education sector, a lack of teachers can mean the students miss out and don’t reach their full potential. When it comes to the Social Work sector, a decreased workforce can be detrimental to service users and lead to delays in receiving the appropriate care.
Locum workers are an effective solution to helping ensure you have every vacancy filled. Bringing temporary workers on board will allow you to continue delivering excellence and meeting professional standards.
You can choose to utilise locum workers while you source permanent staff, or you may decide to keep roles staffed by temporary workers.
Address Temporary Issues
Sometimes the need will arise to bring extra employees on board for temporary reasons. This could be because of illness, maternity leave, paternity leave or an increase in demand for your services.
If you’re operating in the Social Work sector in Australia, then you’ll already know that pressure on services is a prevalent issue. With a shortage of skilled Social Workers and an increasing number of people requiring this kind of support, it makes sense to recruit locum workers to meet demand when necessary.
By providing an easy solution to a temporary increase in your staffing needs, locum workers can help you respond to challenging circumstances.
Fresh Perspectives and New Ideas
A steady stream of locum workers through your organisation is an amazing way to enjoy fresh perspectives and new ideas. These people will bring with them all of the experience that they have gained in their previous roles.
With a permanent workforce, you might find that creativity and imagination dwindle. Regularly bringing in new people will also mean consistently enjoying access to different skills and specialist knowledge.
This is especially important for those in the teaching world, as keeping students engaged and interested is important to the learning process. However, it’s not only the students who will be inspired by the enthusiasm of these temporary teachers – the entire workforce can be energised by their presence.
Save Time and Resources
When you decide to employ locum workers, this is something you’ll undertake via a recruitment agency.
Handing over your recruitment process to an agency will allow you to reclaim this time back. It will also reduce the need for internal recruitment, meaning these resources can be focused elsewhere.
At Tradewind, we’ve been working within the Social Work and Education sectors for over 20 years. This wealth of experience allows us to source the very best locum candidates to fill your vacancies. By handing this time-intensive process over to us, you can focus on the other important aspects of running your organisation.
An additional consideration of employing workers in these sectors is meeting the necessary compliance regulations. Ensuring all employees have the appropriate certifications, qualifications and background checks is a lengthy process best left to recruitment professionals.
Advertising jobs, holding interviews and conducting the relevant checks can all be costly, so you might also often find that hiring temporary workers through an agency saves money.
Find Top Talent for Permanent Roles
Hiring someone that you’ve never worked with before can be risky business. You can’t always know for sure that your new hire is going to be a perfect match to the culture of your organisation or that they’ll work in the way required of them.
Making mistakes during the hiring process for permanent staff can cause ongoing issues, which can be both time-consuming and expensive. Utilising locum workers is a fantastic way to get to know a person before assessing if they’d be suitable for a permanent role.
If you do decide to bring someone on board as a permanent member of staff, keep in mind that not all temporary workers will be open to this because there are so many great benefits to working locum. So, be prepared to negotiate and accept rejection.
Working with Tradewind to Hire Locums
As a specialist recruitment agency for the Education and Social Work sectors in Australia, we have an extensive database of qualified candidates.
If you want to simplify your recruitment processes and benefit from the expertise and convenience of locum workers, contact our friendly team to talk about your requirements!