Temporary agency workers stepping into a permanent position: social skills matter

an article by Nathalie Galais and Klaus Moser (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Nürnberg, Germany) published in Employee Relations Volume 40 Issue 1 (2018)

Abstract

Purpose
Temporary agency work (TAW) has increased enormously in recent decades. Most temporary agency workers are pushed involuntarily into this work arrangement and prefer permanent work arrangements. Therefore, the motive to find a permanent job through TAW is predominant for the majority of temporary agency workers. However, little is known about what helps in obtaining a permanent job in a client organization. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of social skills by simultaneously considering the human capital aspects and motivational background of the individuals for transition success.

Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on a questionnaire study of 151 temporary agency workers with two measurement points. The questionnaires were first administered at the very beginning of their work as a temp and again five months later.

Findings
The findings show that the social skills of temporary agency workers in contrast to various aspects of human capital and motives for temping had a significant impact on becoming a permanent worker in a client organization.

Research limitations/implications
The generalizability of the finding that social skills help temporary agency workers to find a permanent job in a client organization may be restricted due to the particularities of the work setting in the clerical sector. The incidences as well as the determinants of transition success may depend on the industry sector because of the respective assignment characteristics as well as the clients’ reasons of using temporary agency workers. Future research should investigate more thoroughly the role of assignment characteristics for the experiences of the workers.

Practical implications
Social skills seem to play a crucial role for transition success in TAW. Qualification measures should therefore include the training of interpersonal behavior. It would be desirable when the involved organizations would assume responsibility in this respect. Furthermore, policy makers should provide adequate training formats since they promote TAW as a stepping stone opportunity for unemployed people.

Originality/value
This paper suggests that career mobility in the context of flexible work arrangements may be driven by more informal processes of social integration into the existing permanent team. While TAW is seen as a temporary solution in Germany, this study focuses on the individual determinants of transition success of temporary agency workers that is still rare in studies on the topic.

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Dualism, Job Polarization, and the Social Construction of Precarious Work

an article by Steven Vallas and Christopher Prener (Northeastern University, Boston, USA) published in Work and Occupations Volume 39 Number 4 (November 2012)

Abstract

Publication of Arne Kalleberg’s Good Jobs, Bad Jobs provides a welcome opportunity to re-examine the theoretical and conceptual frameworks that scholars bring to bear on precarious employment.

An exemplar of what was once called the “new structuralism,” Kalleberg’s book provides a rigorous, multidimensional analysis of the changes impinging on job stability and security. Although it identifies a vitally important trend toward a growing polarization in the distribution of job rewards, it does so in ways that illustrate the limits of the genre of research to which it belongs.

Constrained to view the subjective experience of work as merely dependent variables, the book cannot explore how social, political, and cultural processes have both shaped and legitimated the rise of precarious employment.

Drawing on recent studies of the popular business press and other media representations, we document the rise of a culture of enterprise that has idealised the uncertainties that have come to grip the labour market, defining the latter as a site on which individual agency can freely unfold.

Only by addressing the interplay between job structures and such discursive and political developments can we hope to understand the rise of labour market precarity, let alone expand workers’ rights to protection against market uncertainty.

Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious Employment Systems in the United States, 1970s to 2000s by Arne L. Kalleberg (published July 2011) is available from the publishers the Russell Sage Foundation

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