The impact of information technology on temporary employee recruitment — An exploratory investigation based on German energy companies

Abstract

To dispose of a flexible workforce is one of today's primary management demands. Temporary employment is a crucial employment arrangement to provide organisations with this flexibility. Research of temporary employment focussed in many cases only on the limited assignment of an employee in an organisation. However, in the context of the European Union temporary employment is mainly characterised by a delta relationship composed of user firms, temporary agencies, and temporary employees. Research has focussed on each leg of this delta and also investigated the different relations among each other. Studies that examined the relationship between user firms and temporary agencies mainly focussed on relational aspects, such as contractual relations. One aspect, though, has not been the subject of much research: The use of information technology (IT). Therefore, this study strives to investigate the impact of IT especially on recruitment between UFs and TAs. As temporary employment depends particularly on the country-specific environment in which it is utilised, such as legal framework, this research was conducted in the German energy industry, where, within the German context, the highest degree of utilisation of temporary employees was observed. To explore the relationship of user firms and temporary agencies regarding the subject matter a qualitative approach was adopted by using semi-structured interviews. The five user firms and six temporary agencies revealed very personal relationships between both parties using conventional media such as telephone in their recruitment relationship. However, one participant expanded their recruitment processes with a significant additional channel: an electronic marketplace, where an independent third party provided a structured web-based business to business solution. Vast benefits were outlined in this case which led to an additional interview with a representative of the electronic marketplace and to a new dimension of this research. Overall, this research produced the impression that the human factor plays a decisive role in the adoption and utilisation of IT in recruiting temps from temporary agencies, and should be considered in the future.