Precarious work in Ontario has been in the news lately. It has been defined as: ‘non-standard employment that is poorly paid, insecure, unprotected and cannot support a household’. Randstad Canada predicted an ‘immense shift’ to temporary or non-traditional work, stating it was becoming a preference of Millennials. The Ontario government has proposed changes to the Employment Standards Act and Labour Relations Act to address some of the issues of precarious, non-standard work.
The United Way teamed with McMaster University to create the Poverty and Employment Precarity in Southern Ontario (PEPSO) research group. Their subsequent report – It’s More Than Poverty – was released in 2013. The report claimed that barely half the people in the GTA – Hamilton region held full-time, permanent jobs and non-traditional arrangements have become the ‘new normal’. Young people in particular have been affected by this ‘gig’ economy, though a recent article in the Globe and Mail told of middle-aged workers thrust into the uncertainty of insecure work.
The impact on workers has been documented in the PEPSO report and in many newspaper articles. Often workers in temporary jobs are paid less than full-time workers doing the same job. Low pay and the uncertainty can lead to several stresses and poor outcomes impacting society:
- Poor health due to the stress of job insecurity, holding multiple jobs, lack of legal protections and irregular hours
- Poor nutrition and limited access to medicine due to low wages
- Lack of a pension program forces workers to work well past a typical retirement age and depend more on the social safety net
- Reduced training and education opportunities. Many companies offer training and education to full-time employees but not for temps
- Limited access to child care and a negative impact on families and communities caused by long hours and low income
The advantages of temporary work for employers are obvious: flexibility in increasing or reducing the workforce as demand dictates, without the need for severance pay; lower cost of labour due to not providing benefits; maintenance of corporate mandated head count and, in some cases, paying lower wages. But a recent KMPG study also laid out the drawbacks of hiring temporary workers: higher turnover of employees (requiring more resources to recruit and train), reduced worker engagement, poorer customer service, all leading to reduced organizational behaviour. Overall, the report suggested that full-time employees had more skills and knowledge and were much more engaged and aligned with the organization.
Not everybody agrees that precarious work is a significant problem. Certainly teenagers flipping hamburgers at McDonalds after school would not be a societal concern. And many workers prefer contract work, especially those that had the opportunity to build their skills and a track record in their early years of employment. Similar to the debate on raising the minimum wage there are claims that legislating precarious work will lead to slower job creation.
My take away? Precarious employment may not be as huge a problem as some suggest. But there is a trend to using temporary workers rather than to hire them full-time. It is often said a company’s most important asset is its people. Good management, living wages, a reasonable amount of security (employees still have to do the job), training and opportunity for advancement are important to create employee engagement. And engagement – a strong feeling that an employee belongs to the company and is committed to its success – ensures better customer service, a diligent work effort and a good company culture. It is a key success factor for any business.
Finding the right combination of skills, aptitude and fit can demand a lot from a company, and its understandable when a company brings on temp workers to handle a surge in demand. But opting to hire temporary workers simply to save short term cost is a very short sighted approach to business.
Ken Jure - Copywriter 