Avis Group Holdings likes to market itself as the car rental giant that tries harder, and apparently it's true. The company, in fact, tries so hard that its staff of 23,000 full-time employees can't always generate all the extra effort needed to repair cars and serve customers. So each year, Avis brings in thousands of temporary employees to help out.
That's good news for Avis customers as well as for Avis managers, who can use temporary, or contingent, workers to contend with seasonal spikes in business levels. Until recently, however, it wasn't such good news for Debra Leff, Avis' human resources manager, and her staff. They were spending more and more time and money finding, hiring and managing temps. Companywide, each of Avis' local hiring managers was working with dozens of separate temp staffing agencies, coordinating hires and filing paper requisitions. For each temp hired, hiring managers spent anywhere from a half-hour to "many hours," according to Leff.
So, in late 1999, Leff decided to test-drive an e-procurement system for temp worker hiring and management to see if the Internet could streamline the process and help Avis save money.
The result? After a recently completed 10-month pilot at the company's headquarters, Avis realised an across-the-board savings of 20 percent on temp worker procurement spending. Not only that, but Leff said e-procuring temps has enabled Avis to find a pool of contingent workers who are better qualified to meet the company's needs and has freed her local hiring managers to spend more time finding skilled permanent workers.
Avis, of course, isn't alone in its increasing reliance on temporary workers. According research company Aberdeen Group, there are now some 10.8 million contingent workers in the United States, a number that includes traditional clerical temps, high-tech consultants, and even lawyers and scientists. Over the last several years, that figure has grown by 25 percent each year. This year, at large companies like Avis, the number of contingent workers employed could double, Aberdeen officials predict.
Why are companies like Avis increasingly relying on temporary workers? There are several reasons, experts say. With unemployment in the United States still hovering below 5 percent, it's become much harder to find qualified people to fill every job. That's particularly true of IT jobs. In addition, according to Aberdeen, more workers are opting to work as free agents to retain control of their schedules and take advantage of better opportunities when they come along.
At companies such as Avis, however, more temp workers has meant more HR headaches and costs.
"Previously, we did everything manually," Leff explained. But the avalanche of paperwork required to requisition and pay temp workers, check credentials such as driver's license validity, and keep track of time sheets wasn't the only problem. Hiring managers at various Avis locations were also wasting time wading through sales pitches from numerous temp agencies and wasting money hiring temps who sometimes showed up for work lacking the specific skills needed for the job, Leff said. In addition, the need for temps often comes up suddenlyâ€"which doesn't always give Avis hiring managers enough time to procure workers the old-fashioned way, through phone calls and faxed requisition forms, she said.
"It will be Friday at 2 p.m., and we'll realise we need 10 additional clerical people for a critical job on Monday morning," Leff said. "It can be very hard, and time-consuming, to get people with the right skills on such short notice."
