Temporary employees

What are temporary employees?

Temporary employees are skilled workers who only work for a limited period of time in a company – for example, through a recruitment agency or on a fixed-term contract. They are mainly used when additional staff are needed at short notice, for example during peak periods, seasonal projects or staff shortages.

Why are they so important in the construction industry?

In the construction industry, order situations often fluctuate greatly. Temporary employees provide the flexibility needed to complete projects on time – even when permanent staff are already working at full capacity. At the same time, they are usually more expensive than permanent employees – one more reason to plan their deployment carefully.

What is important when planning

Precise deployment and capacity planning is crucial to avoid unnecessary costs. A common mistake is to plan for temporary employees as if they were permanent employees – i.e. at 100% capacity. This quickly leads to overcapacity or absenteeism when actual availability deviates.

It is therefore important to only plan temporary resources for as long and as much as they are actually available. This keeps construction planning realistic, transparent and cost-efficient.

Temporary employees in Vanillaplan

Because this issue is so central in practice, Vanillaplan offers simple ways to efficiently manage and schedule temporary employees:

🔸 Mark temporary employees in the schedule:

When creating a new resource, you can tick the box for temporary. This makes it immediately apparent in all planning views who is employed on a temporary basis.

🔸 Enter the actual employment period of temporary employees

You can also enter the actual employment period via resource allocation and plan on this basis. This ensures that temporary staff are only included in capacity and resource planning during their actual employment period.

This provides clarity, prevents planning errors – and saves money.