Finding employees during busy periods shouldn’t be a struggle. There are several strategic solutions you can use to fill your vacancies when you’re short-staffed, and one of them is temporary staffing.
Temporary staffing in property management simply means hiring skilled professionals temporarily to fill certain roles, especially technical ones like maintenance or administrative work.
The key word here is ‘short term’—meaning you can end the working relationship once the need no longer exists. Without the long-term commitment of permanent employment, this flexibility makes temporary hiring a great choice for many property managers. And that’s just one of its many benefits.
Why Temporary Staffing is a Smart Move in Property Management
Here are additional benefits to why temporary staffing is an option for many businesses in the property management industry:
1. It Allows You to Handle Busy Seasons Without Overstaffing
Property management doesn’t have a steady, year-round workload. For example, apartment leasing offices often get swamped in the summer when people move before the school year starts. Home sales also tend to rise in the spring. You’ll need more workers during these busy times, but once the rush is over, you won’t need as many people.
Hiring full-time employees just for a few months wouldn’t make sense because they wouldn’t have enough work the rest of the year. Temporary staffing solves this problem by allowing you to bring in extra help when needed and then scale back when things slow down. This way, your business can stay productive without spending money on additional salaries.
2. It Allows You to Cover for Absent Employees
People take time off for all kinds of reasons—maternity leave, vacations, medical issues, or even unexpectedly quitting. When that happens, companies are often left scrambling to fill the gap, which can delay many operations. But with temporary staffing, you can quickly bring in someone to cover for the missing employee, keeping everything running smoothly.
3. It Saves Time and Money
Hiring full-time employees is expensive and time-consuming. It involves writing job ads, reviewing applications, interviewing candidates, and training them. Even after all that effort, there’s no guarantee that the person will be a good fit. If they don’t work out, you have to start the whole process over again.
Temporary staffing allows you to skip most of this hassle. Staffing agencies do the hard work of finding and vetting candidates so that you can get a qualified worker quickly. Plus, if a temporary employee turns out to be a great fit, you can offer them a full-time job later—kind of like a trial run before making a long-term commitment.
4. It Allows You to Bring in Experts When Needed
Property management isn’t just about collecting rent and fixing maintenance issues. Sometimes, you need someone to handle things like marketing, legal paperwork, or budgeting but don’t want to hire someone full-time. That’s where temporary staffing can help.
Let’s say you’re managing a new apartment complex and need to attract tenants quickly. You might hire a temporary marketing specialist to run ads and promote the property. Once the apartments are leased, you won’t need them anymore, so hiring full-time wouldn’t make sense. Temporary staffing allows you to get expert help when you need it—without long-term costs.
5. It Allows You to Scale in a Changing Market
The property management market is also unpredictable. Sometimes, rental demand is high, and you need more staff to handle new tenants, maintenance, and lease paperwork. Other times, vacancies increase, or market conditions change, and keeping a large full-time staff can become too expensive.
Temporary staffing gives you the flexibility to bring in extra help when business is booming and scale back when things slow down. This way, your business stays profitable and efficient, no matter what the market looks like.
The Downsides of Temporary Staffing
Just like any positive thing, temporary staffing has its downsides. One of the most significant issues is that temp workers often lack the same level of industry knowledge as full-time employees.
Property management is full of rules, regulations, and processes that take time to learn, and temp workers may not be familiar with all the details. Even if they have experience, every company does things a little differently, so they’ll still need training. And in an industry where mistakes can mean lost deals or legal trouble, bringing in someone who isn’t entirely up to speed can be concerning.
There’s also the question of commitment. A temp worker knows they’re only there for a short time, so they may not be as invested in the company’s success as a permanent employee would be. Real estate is all about relationships—whether it’s with clients, tenants, or team members—and a revolving door of temporary staff can make it harder to build trust. Clients might be frustrated if they have to keep dealing with new faces, and full-time employees may not put in as much effort to train or include temps in team dynamics. That lack of engagement can lead to miscommunication, lower morale, and inconsistent service.
And while temp staffing can help you save money, it has its expenses, too. Training new people repeatedly takes time and effort, and if a temp worker doesn’t meet expectations, you might need to spend more time fixing mistakes or adjusting to different work styles.
Is Temp Staffing Worth the Risk?
This is a big question that naturally comes up after reviewing the advantages and disadvantages. Ultimately, it comes down to evaluating the trade-offs and deciding whether the flexibility and speed of temporary staffing outweigh the potential drawbacks in your specific situation.
The flexibility that temp staffing provides is hard to ignore. In many cases, it can be a cost-effective way to keep operations running smoothly—especially when compared to the high cost of hiring full-time employees. In fact, experts estimate that hiring a full-time employee can cost a company up to 40% of their base salary when factoring in recruitment, training, and benefits.¹
On the other hand, while temporary staffing has its challenges, the right strategies can mitigate many of these issues.
How to Make Temp Staffing Work for You
The following are tips and hacks that can help you overcome the challenges of temp staffing and get the most value out of it:
1. Hire for the Right Roles
Temporary staffing works best when you’re filling structured, task-driven roles that don’t require deep industry expertise. If a job has clear processes and can be learned quickly, a temp worker can step in and get to work with minimal training.
For example, an assistant property manager can handle showings and paperwork during busy rental seasons, while administrative support can help with data entry, phone calls, and scheduling. These types of roles keep things running smoothly without requiring long-term commitment.
Conversely, key management positions like property managers, compliance officers, and sales agents should remain full-time. These jobs require strong client relationships, in-depth industry knowledge, and strategic decision-making. The trick is to use temp workers for support tasks while keeping the core team focused on big-picture responsibilities. This way, you get the flexibility of temporary staffing without sacrificing quality or stability.
2. Work with a Staffing Agency that Knows Property Management
Most recruitment agencies have areas of specialization. If you go with a general staffing firm, you might end up with candidates with zero real estate experience—meaning more training, mistakes, and headaches. Instead, it’s worth finding an agency specializing in property management staffing. These agencies already have a pool of pre-screened candidates who understand leasing processes, tenant relations, property maintenance coordination, and compliance requirements—so you don’t have to start from scratch whenever you hire.
When choosing a staffing agency, ask about their screening process to make sure it’s thorough. Also, ensure the agency offers flexible contracts so you’re not locked into long-term commitments if your staffing needs change. A good staffing agency will save you time and effort by delivering qualified workers who can hit the ground running rather than requiring weeks of training.
3. Make Training Quick and Effective
Even the best professionals need some level of training to get familiar with your processes, but that doesn’t mean onboarding should be long and complicated. The key is to create a fast and efficient training system that gets temp workers up to speed without slowing down your business. Instead of dumping a ton of information on them, provide a simple training guide with just the essentials—what they need to know to do their job well.
Assigning a go-to person (like a supervisor or experienced team member) can also make a huge difference. When temp workers know precisely who to ask when they have a question, they waste less time figuring things out on their own. A standardized checklist also helps keep training consistent, making sure every temp hire goes through the same onboarding process. With the right approach, temp workers can be productive immediately, and your team won’t be stuck fixing preventable mistakes.
The Liberty Group: A temporary property management staffing agency you can trust.
For nearly 50 years, The Liberty Group has been helping real estate businesses find the right people to keep their operations running smoothly. Whether you need maintenance technicians, leasing agents, or administrative support, we connect you with experienced, pre-screened professionals ready to step in and do the job.
We know that every property has different hiring needs, which is why we offer flexible staffing solutions—whether it’s temporary staffing, temp-to-hire, direct hire, rapid hire, or executive search. Need help with payroll services, too? We’ve got you covered!
Contact us today. Let’s discuss your staffing needs so you can focus on running your properties while we handle the hiring.
Reference:
1. Navarra, Katie “The Real Costs of Recruitment” SHRM, 11 April 2022, www.shrm.org/mena/topics-tools/news/talent-acquisition/real-costs-recruitment.