Temporary employees play a key role in a company's success — that is according to the latest survey by recruitment agency Expertise Ltd.

The Job Market Survey, which was carried out in August on a confidential web-based basis to work out the use of temporary resources in the Bermuda, reveals that 92 percent of the 47 firms questioned employ temporary staff.

Temps are most commonly used to fill administrative/secretarial (98 percent) and financial/accounting (67 percent) roles, while operations and IT resource gaps are staffed with temporary resources by almost one quarter of participants.

But no respondents fill executive officer/management roles with temporary employees.

Among those taking part in the survey were businesses representing the insurance, financial/professional services, telecommunications and other industries sectors, with the main reasons employers cited for hiring temps being to cover extended resource gaps (specifically maternity leave) and to meet the demands of seasonal workloads/temporary workload peaks.

Typically, according to the report, employers engage the continuous services of a temporary employee for one to three months, while the state of the economy had no impact on how 77 percent of participants view hiring temporary employees.

Malika Taylor, general manager of interim professionals at Expertise said the economic slowdown had not affected companies' decisions to hire temporary staff.

"What areas people use temporary resources has not changed — it is still in the financial, accounting, administration and secretarial sectors," she said.

"A large proportion of companies that were surveyed used temporary staff — 92 percent — that is pretty significant and proves that it is still attractive to hire temporary professionals.

She said that temps offer immediate relief if a vacancy needs to be filled and despite the downturn in the economy, the work is still required to be done and the resources necessary to do that need to be available.

"The reason we wanted to do it was because we found that there was a demand for temporary resources and that demand was not slowing down and we wanted to get a sure understanding of the reasons that people use temporary services," she said.

"We specifically found out why they took on temporary resources, which was useful as well.

"From my experience in the labour market, when there is an economic slowdown or recession, it is typically as we come out of that recession that demand for temporary resources dramatically increases because if companies have cut back on permanent employees they do not have time to get those back as their business ramps up again."

Furthermore, the results showed that most participating employers (65 percent) expressed that maternity leave and other forms of extended leave determine their organisation's decisions to take on temporary employees, closely followed by seasonal workloads and temporary workload peaks, with 54 percent of respondents citing it as a key factor in the hiring of temps.

In times of economic uncertainty, almost 25 percent of participants choose to utilise temporary staff instead of committing to permanent resources, the survey concluded, with most of those quizzed maintaining this stance during the present financial downturn.

Of the 75 percent who do not consider economic or financial uncertainty an organisational driver, 94 percent maintain their outlook on hiring temporary resources, nine percent find it less attractive and six percent find it more attractive during the current slowdown in the economy.

Likewise, employers who do not use temps generally keep up this practice regardless of the state of the economy (75 percent) and none find hiring temporary employees more attractive versus permanent staff.