Your business has done well for some time. You’ve hired the best team of people to work in your company. Now is the time to get your business growing faster by making it more publicly recognised.

You’ve decided to hold an exhibition or a road show. Then you realise, that you may not have enough people in the company to organise the event. You need more people, but only for the event.

So you ask your team for ideas on the type of people you're looking for the part-time job. Not easy is it? Part-timers are a different group compared to company staff. They can play hard to get if they want to or otherwise just agree to everything and don’t show up on the event days, they’ve got nothing to lose anyway.

So how do you manage them?

Here are a few pointers for you to consider:

• Conduct an interview differently. You really need to ask questions that they would not expect. It makes them more open to revealing why they have considered the part-time job and if they can fit the responsibility needed for the position. You need more experienced part-timers to handle the more complex positions.
• When you get the part-time team, you need to communicate clearly to them the rules and responsibilities. Don’t expect them to get the picture from experience. A mistake due to a part-timer not understanding a rule or responsibility can be a serious problem for the motivation of the part-timer team.
• With that you have to set your expectations for them early and make sure it is communicated. No last minute changes. Changes cause confusion and misunderstandings.
• Your staff may feel more authoritative over the part-timers. Now during a project there are the supervisors and the workers. Yet you need to threat the part-timers equally. Sometime a part-timer may out shine even your own staff. You need to appreciate them like you would a good staff. Treat all those involved in the project equally.
• Another important aspect is to keep communication lines open from both the staff and the part-timers. Communication is important. Problems need to be directly communicated to the project manger to make decisions and solve as soon as possible. Don’t make it difficult for the part-timers to communicate to you. Sometimes if the problem can be resolve quickly, they would not escalate to cause further damage.
• At the end of the project, show appreciation to the part-timers first. You may never see them in future, but who knows, you might have another project and those amazing part-timers might want to help you cause you appreciated them. You can appreciate your staff back at the office. Maybe have a party.

Still so many more points, but that’s the basics. Have a great time with your upcoming project. You’ll learn a lot from experience than whatever you can read from books and articles.

If you think it would be difficult handling part-timers, it’ll always good to look for help. Engage Ares Marketing, we’re there to help you for the part-timers you need for your project.