You’ll be taking on a temporary team to help you survive your upcoming busy season (or a sudden influx of challenging orders), and at this point, everything in in place. Workstations are ready, the paperwork is under control, and your candidate selection process is well underway. But there’s one more step you haven’t yet addressed: warning and preparing your current teams for the influx that’s about to happen. If you haven’t yet spoken to your staff about the new temporary workers that will soon be joining their ranks, now is the time. Keep these considerations in mind.

Provide Lead Time

Give your teams plenty of advance notice, and in case they forget, provide reminders. Give them the exact dates and times when the new workers will be showing up and leaving. Make sure they understand why this will be happening, and give them a place to turn in case they have questions or suggestions.

Clearly Explain Responsibilities

What exactly will your current employees need to do when the newcomers arrive? Maybe you’d like Sally to train half of them for two weeks, and Steve to train the other half. Maybe you’d like a specific employee to greet each newcomer at the door and lead them to their workstation. Maybe you’d like a different employee to take responsibility for reach stage of the training and onboarding process. Whatever your expectations may be, make them clear, and gain confirmation and buy-in from the employees who will be taking a leadership role.

Build Some Excitement

As your current teams to prepare to make space for the newbies, generate some cheerful excitement about the process. Find out something interesting about each new person that you can share (a passion for skiing, a background in a fascinating field, an interest in art, etc, etc). Encourage your employees to reach out and be friendly with the new staff. If this means looking up some of their names online beforehand to learn more about them, that’s great.

Encourage Patience

While your new influx of staff will ultimately speed things up and remove some of the burden from your current employees, there may be some hitches along the way. Ask your full time staff to be patient with your temporary teams while they learn the ropes, and encourage them to lend a helping hand whenever possible. Thank them for the commitment and sacrifices they make to the company, and remind them that these sacrifices don’t go unnoticed.

For more on how to keep your permanent staff on track while you wrangle an incoming tide of temporary help, reach out to the staffing experts at Personnel Services Unlimited.