Temporary or casual workers are not new in Australia and they allow companies to expand and contract to fit the workflow that they are experiencing.

According to Adecco, one of the leading Australian recruitment firms for casual labour, there is a growing trend in the transport and logistics area to utilise temporary workers in a number of roles.

In a recent article at http://www.fullyloaded.com.au/ looks at this interesting trend:

Temporary labour has become an increasingly useful option in the transport and logistics sector, recruitment firm Adecco has highlighted.

While the rate of growth is expected to ease somewhat from the 7.5 percent recorded over the past four years, Adecco notes it will still grow 5.2 percent over the next five years.

The use of temporary workers now accounts for 33,700 jobs or 6 percent of all transport and logistics roles in Australia, on Bureau of Statistics figures, with salaries averaging $1,362 a week.

“The requirement for experienced drivers, coupled with strong customer service skills are still in high demand,” the Adecco report says.

This performance is part of a general trend that has prompted company Australia and New Zealand Chief Executive Jeff Doyle urge an overhaul of Australia’s “antiquated” industrial relations framework to deal with modern complexities.

“We have a 2 percent growth in temporary labour in 2012, and with almost 30 percent of Australians now working in part-time roles, our 20th century industrial relations framework does not reflect this shift to a more flexible workforce,” Doyle states.

“We are in a situation where we’ve got young kids struggling to find a job to the other extreme of older Australians wanting to work – but not 9-to-5, five days week – so we can’t ignore the need for a more flexible industrial relations framework anymore.

“And interestingly the Adecco report found professional and management roles experienced the largest increases in temporary engagement in 2012 with a rise of over 30 percent, contradicting the assumption that temporary labour is primarily used in unskilled labour sectors.”

The use of temporary labour has grown across almost all industries in the last four years.

In addition to the 7.5 percent growth in transport and logistics, mining and resources topped the list with 91.7 percent, followed by energy and utilities with 51.1 percent, engineering and technical (29.5 percent), sales and marketing (21 percent), government (13.7 percent), accounting and finance (9.2 percent), trades (8.5 percent), banking and financial services (5.6 percent), office support (5 percent) and manufacturing and operations with 0.6 percent growth. Contact centres were the only sector to experience a decline with a drop of 2.5 percent.

Source: http://www.fullyloaded.com.au/industry-news/articleid/82784.aspx

Working as a temp worker can be an attractive prospect for workers as well. Not everyone wants a full time position at the company for a long period of time and the flexibility of temp work is very attractive.

It allows workers to experience different work environments and take on varying challenges which means that they rarely get bored or feel stale when they go to work.