Flexibility in the Type of TEMPS we Supply – A COVID-19 Case Study

Most business have gone through a period of rapid change with COVID-19. Changes in ways of working that would have taken months to implement, have been adopted in weeks. Given that we’re in the business of providing leave and emergency TEMP cover, COVID-19 has given us the opportunity to test and review our ability to support our clients, within this rapidly evolving environment.

As a niche-agency, we pride ourselves in knowing and anticipating our clients’ needs, many of whom, we’ve worked with for over a decade. We’ve seen fairly steady patterns in terms of staffing needs and we had gotten good at recognising and responding to these. As with everything else, the uncertainty and unpredictability that the COVID-19 Pandemic brought with it, our client’s requirements were affected and in turn, so were the services we had to deliver. We saw very quickly that we needed to be highly responsive to changes in the numbers of TEMP Worker’s supplied and we also needed to be highly flexible in the type of TEMPs supplied.

Below is the second of two case studies. This illustrates how we supported our client by expanding the type of temps we provide to meet their changed requirements, owing to COVID-19.

This case study is based on supply to a medium sized Elder Care Facility. It showed that because Three Q TEMPS is a niche hospitality and catering TEMPS agency, we could provide them with the range of temps they required owing to changed circumstances.

They needed a kitchen porter, a catering assistant, a domestic, a chef, a general porter and a cleaner with healthcare experience and they were able to get them all from Three Q.  Daily updates from their team and their ability to work meant Three Q TEMPS went on stand-by in-case the client needed cover.  Our chefs who worked through the whole crisis trained up their relief cover and made themselves available on their mobile even on the days they were not working.

What we are grateful for:

  • The willingness and pride our Temps took in remaining part of the team to ensure service delivery during the pandemic
  • The client’s recognition and gratitude for continuity and responsiveness of Temps to come in to the unit – some times with less than an hour’s notice.
  • The opportunity and ability to safely supply this client for over 15 years. They got to see the full variety of the Temps on our panel – they have their favourites and have already made early bookings for future annual leave cover to ensure they get the same Temps back in.

This case study allows us to illustrate how we were able to be responsive, effective and supply a variety of temp workers to meet our clients’ changing needs. If you’d like to talk to us about how we can help you with your staffing requirements or if you’d like to book catering staff, please call us on 01-878-3335 or email us on temps@3qrecruitment.ie .

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Flexibility in the Volume of Temps Supplied – A COVID-19 Case Study

At a recent online staff quiz, one of the questions we asked was, what the 3 Qs in Three Q Temps Ltd. stood for. I’m happy to report that a number of teams buzzed in to answer. The idea behind the name is that we’re driven by Quality. As we’re a niche agency, supplying TEMP Workers to healthcare facilities, we ensure our TEMP Workers are suitably Qualified. Finally, because our approach to customer care is based on partnership, we support your different staffing needs by providing TEMP Workers in the Quantity you require. We recently got a chance to review our service during the COVID-19 pandemic and we’ve seen that our 3 Qs have been put to the test. We’ve undertaken 2 case studies, the first of which you’ll find below.

This case study is based on supply to a major Dublin Hospital. During the first month of the pandemic, we saw an increased demand from one of our clients for cleaners, domestics, ward attendants and general porters. It showed that we were able to scale up to support the increased requirements of our hospital client, while adapting our process to be safe and compliant with HSE guidelines. Our quality commitment ensured that we provided experienced catering staff, with the right qualifications throughout the emergency.

With the client’s own staff returning to work, we saw an initial drop in demand so we could scale down when needs reduced. However, we’ve seen that COVID-19 effects business and services differently and this effect can evolve quite rapidly given the change in infection rates and health and safety advise. In the case of this client, we saw a spike in demand after the initial reduction but this time it was for leave and emergency cover. We could then re-engage and resupply to meet a second increased demand – all within a period of four weeks.

As a Niche Catering Temps Agency We Are

  • Proud to have safely supplied this client (10 years using Three Q Temps) with front-line temps and our team worked with hospital teams to care for patients in acute & COVID positive wards
  • Grateful for our clients’ trust in our ability to deliver. We’re thankful for the client’s gratitude for continuity and responsiveness of Temps to come in to the unit, which they’ve sometimes done with less than an hour’s notice
  • Thankful for the willingness and pride our TEMP Workers took in remaining part of the team thus ensuring that we could support our clients during the pandemic. These were big numbers for us to deliver with 24 hours’ notice and our TEMP Workers delivered. Despite the pandemic and despite the short notice, they said ‘Yes – we will work!’

This case study allows us to illustrate how we were able to be responsive, effective and support our client’s changing needs.  We continue to look for ways we can help all our clients. If you’d like to talk to us about how we can help you with your staffing requirements or if you’d like to book catering staff, please call us on 01-878-3335 or email us on temps@3qrecruitment.ie

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Why We Have Requested All Of Our Office Staff and Temp Workers to Maintain a Contact Log

Why We Have Requested All Our Office Staff and Temp Workers to Maintain a Contact Log

As an agency that is privileged and proud to provide essential frontline workers that prepare and serve meals to healthcare staff, patients and service users, we take our responsibility toward our staff, temp workers and the wider community, seriously. We recommend that all our Temp Workers maintain a Contact Log. This is because as essential workers, they are travelling to and from work that often involves offering frontline services within a healthcare setting.

We also recommend that our Office Staff maintain a Contact Log. While we have taken steps to minimise face to face interactions by digitalising processes, maintaining social distancing guidelines, staggering work times and offering staff the option to work from home on certain days to minimise the number of people in the office; commuting into work and hiring on frontline staff can bring them in contact with the virus

Contact Tracing Policy

To this end, our new Contact Tracing Policy has followed best practice and recommended that all Office Staff and Temp Workers to fill in a Daily Contact Log. We’ve communicated this officially, though our HR portal  and we’ve sent out texts and WhatsApp messages with information that’s accessible and easy to understand.

So why maintain a Contact Log at all? Maintaining a contact log is important because it helps the Health Service Executive (HSE) prevent the spread of COVID-19 by assisting the HSE’s Contact Tracing Team to quickly, efficiently and accurately Identify Close Contacts of people with COVID-19. This is important because the faster they identify Close Contacts, the quicker they can ask them to self-isolate, therefore protecting other family members and the wider community by restricting the spread of the virus.

This way we’re keeping our loved ones safe and we’re supporting the HSE by ensuring that the virus is not spreading. This means that the number of COVID-19 cases are kept under control so that healthcare works and other workers who work in a healthcare setting are not overwhelmed. Keeping the numbers down also helps ensure that the HSE has sufficient resources for people with COVID-19 who do require hospitalisation or Intensive Care.

Video: How to Maintain a Contact Log

So, how do you maintain a contact log? Watch our video on maintaining a contact log here: 

Read more about how to maintain a contact log here with our PDF: How to Distinguish Between a Close Contact and a Casual Contact

Stay Safe!

Three Q Perms & Temps

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Coronavirus: Health & Safety, PPE & Infection Prevention & Control Guidelines & Resources for Our Temps

Health & Safety during COVID-19 / Coronavirus

Our Temps’ Health & Safety is our priority & in these changed times please take the time to read, digest and talk with us about the new H&S measures in the places you work due to COVID 19.

Each facility our Temps work in will have their own Health & Safety and Infection Prevention & Control measures. Please take the time to get familiar with these instructions. Review the COVID-19 information on your HR Locker Profile, read the information we have sent you via email, text & Whatsapp & please talk to us about any questions, queries or concerns you may have.

Personal Protective Equipment

If you work in a facility that requires wearing personal protective equipment, or you want to learn more about it and how to use it safely, the following information and video comes from the HSE website. Your work location is responsible for providing personal protective equipment to the personnel that require it. Our responsibility is communicate and share the HSE Health & Safety Guidelines with our Temps so all of us are educated in and have the resources available to us, to learn the Health & Safety and Infection Control measures put in place.

Personal protective equipment such as is valuable as an additional protection for patients and staff. It should only be used where it is likely to be beneficial as outlined in the HSE Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) guidance. It should not be used in other settings where it does not provide any benefit. The unnecessary use of PPE will deplete stocks and increases the risk that essential PPE will not be available to help protect you, your colleagues and patients when needed.

Video: How to Put On & Take Off Personal Protective Equipment – HSE

Resources for COVID-19 Health & Safety Information

Information for those working in healthcare facilities can be found on The Health Protection Surveillance Centre: Corona Virus: Guidance For Healthcare Workers

For all of our Temps working in the HSE, You can keep up to date with HSE guidelines here: HSE: Coronavirus (COVID

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Three Q Temp Satisfaction Survey Results – Happy Temps are Quality Temps

Happy Temps are Quality Temps

Temp Satisfaction Survey

We ran a Survey with our Temps to get feedback about their experience with Three Q TEMPS. We want to know what our Temps like about Three Q, what we can improve and if we’re doing a good job. Three Q TEMPS has always had Quality at its focus and one of the main ways we identify where we can improve is through receiving feedback and making innovations and adaptations. 20 years of which brought us to where we are today – Providing The Gold Standard in Temping.

With feedback being an essential part of company growth, we want to formally check in with our Temps and ask them how we can improve as well as let us know what we’re doing right. We put people first because people make the business. And without our Temps, the Gold Standard in Temping wouldn’t be possible.

We believe that happy Temps are hard working Temps. Being good to our Team is not just a nice thing to do, we think its important for our business.

In the Infographic below, you can see some of the findings from our Survey:

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Spare An Hour Campaign for Inner City Helping Homeless

Spare An Hour Campaign for Inner City Helping Homeless

Spare An Hour is an annual CSR fundraising campaign where a charity or organisation is democratically elected by our office and temp staff. Our team nominated several charities and put it to a vote where our Temps could choose the recipient organisation of our 7th Annual Spare An Hour Campaign. Among the nominated charities were: Dublin Samaritans, Inner City Helping Homeless and Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin.  

Our team could then volunteer to opt in and donate an hour of their pay to ICHH. Three Q would then match each team member’s donation doubling the total amount raised.

This year Inner City Helping Homeless was nominated and chosen because of the compassion they show to the homeless. ICHH is an organisation that helps homeless people on the streets of Dublin every single night of the week. They’re not government funded which means all of its funding comes from charity partnerships and fundraisers. With our office, based in Dublin City Centre, we see first-hand the need for organisations like Inner City Helping Homeless.

We are humbled by and proud of the generosity shown by our Three Q Team. Some of our office staff & Temps were so moved by this cause and the need for support for the homeless, they donated multiple hours to the Spare An Hour Campaign.

On November 14th, our donations were deducted from our payslips and our team proceeded to calculate the total amount raised by our temps and office staff.

And the amount raised was..

€1,781.70!

We are thrilled with this figure and it means after Three Q matched it, the total amount donated to Inner City Helping Homeless is:

€3,563

We invited some of our Temps into our office to present the cheque to Gerry & Geraldine from Inner City Helping Homeless team in December and we can’t express how proud we are of our team for taking part. It was our 7th year running the Spare An Hour Campaign and our Temps still surprise us with their kindness.

Our Spare An Hour Campaign shows that small can be mighty when everyone comes together to give something.  We’d love to help other SMEs start their own Spare An Hour Campaign. If you’re interested in starting your own Spare An Hour Campaign in your organisation, reach out to Cora at cora@3qrecruitment.ie and she’ll send you over a framework on how to plan and implement the campaign that you can use to guide your own campaign. 

Keep updated with Three Q’s CSR campaigns and TEMPS news on our social media platforms:

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How To Instil Resilience in a Team

How To Instil Resilience in a Team

Resilience is defined as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.

A report late last year states that work-related stress experienced by employees in Ireland had doubled between 2010 and 2015. Not surprisingly, people in the health sector were more likely to report stress where as workers in the retail and construction sector reported lower levels of stress. Reducing workplace stressors where possible can help your employees. However, if you do work in a high-stress sector and your employees have to deal with stressors that are beyond your control, one of the ways you can support them is by helping them build resilience.

Can you build resilience in a team? It’s commonly understood as a trait that’s learned on an individual level. But it can be a trait of a team and culture. Two tactics in leadership that can improve your team’s resistance to stress in work:

How To Instil Resilience in a Team to Reduce Stress - Three Q TEMPS

BE AN ALLY

Mayo Clinic states that social support Is key for stress management and in groups. Feedback can be given with encouragement and a spirit of support. Google CEO Sundar Pichai is said to embody an ally-to-all mentality.

REMIND EMPLOYEES WHY YOU’RE ALL IN IT TOGETHER

A Bocconi University researcher, Nicola Bellé, ran an experiment on nurses assembling surgical kits—a tedious job with potentially life-altering consequences. Nurses who met the health care practitioners who were using the kits made 15% fewer errors and worked 64% longer than their peers. Simply seeing their own impact boosted the nurses’ resilience.

To increase employees’ stamina and coping skills, remind them how their work contributes to the larger purpose

These two tactics can help your team build resilience to stress which will lead to reduced absenteeism, decreased employee turn-over and an increase in productivity.

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Celebrating 20 Years as a Temp Agency & The Gold Standard in Temping

Celebrating 20 Years as a Temp Agency & The Gold Standard in Temping

Well, Three Q has now been in business for over 20 years (how time flies?). But a lot has changed since 1999, the year Three Q was founded. Last year we reflected on how much has changed since 1999. To get a blast from the past, see our blog post: What Life Was Like In 1999. Now, we’re in our 21st year of business and to celebrate 2 decades of Three Q, we want to show our appreciation for Our People that helped us get here. That’s our office staff, clients and temps past and present. Without you, Three Q PERMS & TEMPS couldn’t have delivered on its promise to be the Quality Temp and Recruitment Agency.

Three Q TEMPS 20 Years in Recruitment

Temps

A big thank you to everyone of our temp workers that worked for us over the last 20 years helping us provide a quality service with quality temps. Throughout our history, our temps have gone above and beyond for our clients and our Temp Consultants. Your commitment to quality work is essential for providing the Gold Standard in Temping.

Clients

We want to say thank you to every client we’ve ever had, without our clients’ trust in Three Q, we couldn’t have developed and improved our service year on year. Continuous innovations, investments and refinements over 20 years have lead to Three Q providing the Gold Standard in Temping and that wouldn’t have been possible without our clients support and partnership.

Office Team

A big thank you to every member of our office staff. Each person has played their part in Three Q’s story and made the company what it is today. From Suzanne and Charlotte who have worked with us for over 10 years to the people who spent less than a year with us, each team member is greatly appreciated for working in accordance with our commitment to a quality, reliable service. 

How Are We Celebrating Twenty Years?

Entering our 21st year in business, we’re going to show our gratitude to our clients and temps with monthly competitions and celebrating stories from Our People of Three Q. We also want to show off our incredible team of temps with a series of videos on individual temps showcasing their work, personality, impact on our CSR causes such as the Spare an Hour Campaign and their life outside of temping.

The Gold Standard in Temping

Over the past 20 years we’ve been striving to improve the quality of service every year with innovations and improvements which have been led by our clients’ needs. Today, we’re proud to say we provide the Gold Standard in Temping. Over the year, alongside praising our quality Temps, we’d like to toot our own horn a little and talk about what exactly makes up our innovative, quality service.

After 20 years, we feel it’s a good time to reflect and remember. We’d like to ask our clients, temps and office staff past & present to reflect with us. If you have a Three Q story, we’d love to hear it. Tell us about an experience or memory you’ve had with us by emailing Aaron at: sales@3qrecruitment.ie 

If you’re a temp worker, job seeker, member of our office staff or a client, thanks for putting your trust in Three Q and here’s to (hopefully) a few more decades.

Thank you,

The Three Q Team

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Three Q Temp Workers Deliver Quality Service

Our Temps are the best on the market! (I am slightly biased) I firmly believe we have some of the best Temp staff around, not only are they all qualified for the tasks at hand but they bring another Q to the forefront in delivering a Quality service to patients in Hospitals all over Dublin. They are some of the most generous people too. Always contributing to charity and worthy causes, one of which is our Spare an Hour Campaign, where each staff member from our team is asked to spare an hr of their wages for a charity of the companies choice, this year it was Our Ladies Hospice in Harold’s Cross. We had our biggest collection to date raising over €5,000.

One of our Temp employee’s gets a special mention as she is always going above and beyond for the company and the client. Sharon recently won our Temp Worker of the month award due to her flexibility, reliability and her positive work ethic. She has impressed not only everyone at Three Q by helping us in numerous contracts, but also with our clients due to her ability and skill within her craft. Sharon is someone that you know you can rely on and who goes that extra mile and will never let you down. Sharon has been with Three Q for a number of years and loves her work, when she goes on a holiday or goes back home to visit friends and family we really miss having her and so do our clients, who will often pre-book her services before she has even stepped back into the country. This is a sign of a true gem of an employee and we really appreciate all her hard work over the years.

o learn more about our Temps’ charitable work during our 2018 Spare an Hour campaign, click here to read our blog which documents the entire Spare an Hour journey and our Temps participation throughout: Three Q Temps are the Heroes of Our Spare An Hour Campaign

To learn more about our Temp Services, go to our website here Working as a Temp.

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Our Agency Staff Monthly Award – Temp of The Month

Why should you start an Employee of the Month program? Maybe you have one but it’s fallen by the wayside. In this blog we will talk about the benefits of having one, and we will talk about our agency worker of the month award which is called Three Q’s Temp Worker of The Month award.

Three Q is the only Temp Agency with a monthly Agency Staff Award 

Three Q’s Temp Worker Of  The Month for our Agency Staff

At Three Q we reward those exceptional Temp Workers who stand out and deserve to be acknowledged due to their ongoing commitment to produce a quality service for our clients day-in day-out, because at the end of the day that’s what a professional strives to achieve. It’s not just our Temp Consultants who manage our Temps bookings every day who decide. We also listen to our clients’ feedback and our temp workers’ testimonials about each other when deciding who the Temp Worker of the Month will be. When we’ve finally made the hard decision of choosing just one Temp of The Month, we then show them off wherever we can! They are displayed in our monthly newsletter to our temp workers and our clients where we also write a short piece on their achievements that month and why they won the award. We also post about it on our social media profiles.

Benefits of a monthly award for employees and agency staff?

Implementing a monthly employee recognition program can have a powerful effect on your team. However, it should always be done with clear goals in mind, otherwise you risk spending a lot of time and money on a glorified popularity contest that will achieve little results and risk alienating some of your team members.

So, what are you looking to accomplish?

  • Better employee engagement
  • Increased productivity
  • Improved customer service ratings
  • Higher quality in your products or services
  • Improved employee retention

Employee of the Month and our Temp Worker of the Month awards clearly have their benefits and can be easily implemented but they are also useful for the simple means of empowering your team and praising their successes. We believe business is about more than just profit. We care about our team and see this award as a way to celebrate them and say thanks!

To learn more about our Temp Workers you can click here.

You can also read about our Temps involvement in our 2018 Spare an Hour Campaign for Our Lady’s Hospice here. 

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