Temporary work is becoming increasingly popular in the UK, enabling organizations to manage when faced with staff shortages and external and competitive pressures. Temporary workers are individuals hired by organizations to perform job roles when they are required. Temporary employees can work full-time or part-time, for one or more weeks, depending on whether the organization requires their work or not. Temporary work contributes to the problem of low productivity and low performance work, this essay will consider this form of employment from a number of perspectives and discover solutions to this problem. Articles will be critically evaluated by weighing opinions and arguments advanced by each author. First a brief introduction on temporary worker profiling, followed by the reasons for hiring temporary staff and the advantages and disadvantages for both the employer and the employee. After the evaluation, an analysis of each management perspective and solutions for the temporary work problem will be carried out. Profiling temporary workers Kirk and Belovics (2008) suggest that a large number of individuals meet the key characteristics of temporary workers. The most common profile of temporary employees is that of those seeking flexible working arrangements or low-skilled jobs; women, students and immigrants. Conley (2002) agrees with Kirks and Belovics' (2008) profiling of temporary workers, as studies have revealed that these individuals hold a greater number of temporary contracts. However, in Burgess and Connell's (2006) article, Hipple and Stewart (1996) argue that the nature of temporary work has changed and continues to change... disloyalty to one's job, lack of commitment to the company and damage to their market share, providing the reasons for these difficulties. It is also clear that with the adaptation of management perspectives within an organization, there are solutions. If Conley (2002) adapted the unitarism or pluralism perspective to the UK public sector, he may find that NQTs are more likely to remain within the sector and would receive lower annual resignation figures. However, by adopting these perspectives, managers may find themselves becoming too attached to the employees who are there to perform tasks and losing the right to control them. Consequently, by tailoring the correct management perspectives and techniques to individual employees, organizations should discover effective solutions to employee relations problems.
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