Background
Based in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, this established food processing company serves multiple demanding markets simultaneously, from outdoor and emergency preparedness consumers to government agencies and life sciences clients. What they produce has to be right every time. That means their workforce does too.
When production scales up across multiple product lines and customer segments at once, the pressure on operations is immediate. In an environment like this, being short-staffed isn’t an inconvenience. It’s a missed order.
The Challenge
The manufacturer’s production calendar was anything but predictable. Demand surged, then dipped. When output climbed, operations scrambled to bring workers in fast. When volume slowed, they were left carrying labor costs that no longer matched the work.
The staffing model wasn’t broken, but it was brittle. They needed a workforce strategy built for variability.
The Solution
Working closely with operations leadership, Selectemp helped the manufacturer shift away from a rigid full-time-only model for associate-level processing and packaging roles.
In its place: a flexible staffing strategy that allowed headcount to rise and fall with actual production demand; adjusted weekly, precisely, and without disruption.
The Results
What began as a handful of temporary placements grew into a genuine workforce partnership.
This manufacturer didn’t just gain access to workers. They gained a staffing model that could grow with them and a partner invested in making sure it did:
- Scaled from 6 to 90+ temporary associates with the capacity to ramp quickly when production demands spiked, and to pull back when they eased.
- True week-to-week agility: managers could adjust labor levels based on actual need, not best guesses made weeks in advance.
- Labor costs tied directly to output, eliminating the drag of overstaffing during slow periods and the chaos of understaffing during peaks.
- Expanded across departments: flexible staffing grew beyond processing into distribution, quality control, administrative, and accounting functions.
- One trusted partner, less internal overhead: consolidating all Oregon-based staffing through Selectemp simplified vendor management and freed up time for the internal HR team.
Is your workforce built for what’s next — or just for what’s now?
Talk to your local Selectemp representative and find out how a flexible staffing strategy can work for your business. Contact Selectemp →
