I am one of the senior managers in a food manufacturing company. Our business is seasonal so, at certain times of the year, we employ agency workers to smooth out the peaks and troughs in workload. We have 250 full-time employees who are on permanent contracts and we take on up to 50 more people from the agency depending on the time of year.
Many of the agency people we use are 'regulars'. They also have a wealth of experience, many having spent years working in the manufacturing sector. These individuals are excellent people – bright and energetic, hard working and clearly engaged in what we do here.
They know our company well and, I believe, have a high regard for it and for the management team because we insist on operating in an enlightened and progressive way. We pay agency workers well – better than the market rate – and treat them with respect, regarding them as the same as full time employees for as long as they are with us.
However, no matter how close many of them might feel to the company, the fact remains that the agency people we use are 'workers' rather than 'employees'. As such, I think they have no real sense of ownership in the business. As a result, and perfectly understandably, they don't contribute very much to our continuous improvement programme. Ideas from them for our suggestion box, for example, tend to be few and far between and they are not prepared to 'go the extra mile'.
While I recognise that this is perfectly natural, I am keen to instill in the agency workers we take on a sense of belonging and to strengthen their perceived connection to the company. I'm convinced that this would be good both for them and for us. They would, I believe, feel more empowered and therefore inclined to contribute to the business in terms of improvement ideas and our business would benefit significantly from those ideas.
Can you tell me how best to manage this situation to encourage the best from all our employees – permanent and temporary – in order to maximise the CI opportunities available?