Temporary agency workers’ well-being and human resource management sustainability: A qualitative case study

Abstract

This qualitative case study explores the seemingly paradoxical relationship between the proliferation of companies’ involvement in temporary agency work and their pursuit of HRM sustainability. The case is an extreme one; the case company is comprised of half permanent and half temporary agency work staff. Due to unclear strategy towards managing a mixed workforce, the company has been suffering high turnover rate and low organisational efficiency. Contributing to the quantitative research methods dominated well-being studies in temporary work context, and to the insufficient academic research on temporary agency work featured by a triangular structure, we draw upon longitudinal qualitative empirical data. Which has given voices to employees, a business unit and the HR department, and is considered valuable to demonstrate the complex reality of employee groups and the implications to different actors. Through building a sensitising framework that incorporates sustainable HRM and workplace well-being resources models, our study suggests nuances to tailor the existing framework into a temporary agency work specific context for future generalisation studies. The findings suggest that to achieve organisational efficiency and ultimately corporate sustainability, the case company needs to address all employees’ well-being in strategy and HR practices.