Brisbane start-up utilises idle staff over the Christmas season
Idle staff will cost businesses more than money this holiday season.
Heading into the holiday season, many small to medium businesses (SMBs) find they must let go of valuable-but-underworked employees or waste money on idle staff. Why do we accept this as common business practice? One Queensland startup suggests we don’t have to.
Employee inactivity costs Australian businesses a huge $305b each year in untapped productivity. A 2013 Chandler MacLeod White Paper on the issue reports that 85% of workers believe they could be 21% more productive on the job, at any time.
Tim Walmsley, CEO of BenchOn, sees first-hand the pain that business owners go through when they to let go of valuable employees, simply because there is a gap in their contract and the business can't afford to keep them.
“The holiday period, in particular, can be a painful time when SMB owners are presented with a lose/lose situation. They can accept the cost of keeping staff on during the seasonal downturn, or they have to let them go. Businesses cannot create lasting employment in this situation,” Mr Walmsley said.
“There is a market for that under-utilised workforce,” says Walmsley. “Research by Manpower Group Talent Shortage found that 42% of companies struggle to fill contracts due to a lack of available talent.
BenchOn, an innovative QLD startup, is the first company to tackle the issue head on, smoothing the peaks and troughs of the annual business cycle by matching a business’ idle staff to short-term contracts from reputable companies and agencies.
“There are plenty of contracts available for businesses with idle staff, in fact, the estimated value of contract work for idle staff within the BenchOn customer portfolio is more than $6.4M, with that amount set to rise as the holiday season approaches,” said Mr Walmsley.
The model works, with a recent SMB saving more than $86,000 in employee-related overhead for the upcoming holiday period. For a small company with less than five employees, saving such a large sum can spell the difference between closing the doors or letting go of a critical part of its workforce.
“With the holiday season looming, it’s up to Australian SMBs to seek out opportunities to keep their valuable staff on, without having them idly sitting on the bench costing a fortune. The work and the talent is out there, it’s up to business owners to shift the status-quo or suffer another expensive holiday period.” Mr Walmsley said.
[BenchOn]