A staffing agency is a company that engages in the business of recruiting, screening, interviewing, and hiring employees, and then placing those employees in positions assisting other companies. The client companies utilizing those employees then pay the staffing agency fee for the services of their employees.
As the employer of record for their assigned employees, the staffing agency pays the employees’ hourly wages, covers their worker’s compensation and unemployment compensation insurance, and handles all employment paperwork such as the employee’s I-9 and year-end W2s. Most staffing agencies (including Flex-Staff) offer their assigned employees a variety of benefits including vacation and holiday pay, health, vision, dental, and disability insurance, and even a 401k.
Companies utilize the services of a staffing agency for a variety of reasons including staffing special projects or peaks in workload, filling in for their own employees who are on vacation or ill, or finding and trying out candidates that they can consider hiring onto their payroll. Job seekers utilize the services of a staffing agency to help earn extra money between jobs, gain experience and build their resume, provide them scheduling flexibility that traditional employment can’t offer, or to help them find a long-term career.
While some assignments can last as few as 4 hours, some can last for days, weeks, months, or even years (if both the employee and the client company find the relationship to be mutually beneficial). Many assignments lead to full-time employment on the payroll of the client company where the employee was working through the staffing agency. Typically, the staffing agency’s client company is required to keep the assigned employee on the payroll of the staffing agency for a minimum number of hours before transferring the employee to their own payroll.
Rather than a last resort, working for a staffing agency is the first choice for millions of people across the country and around world every year.