How to Train Temporary Employees & Seasonal Workers

Temporary employees enable organizations operating in industries with high fluctuating work volumes, like insurance carriers requiring additional claims agents to process catastrophe claims, financial service providers during tax season, and retail chains onboarding seasonal workers for the holidays.

Despite seasonal workers’ temporary nature, organizations must enable these employees to hit the ground running, fulfill their responsibilities, and provide high-level customer service to achieve business outcomes.

While temporary workers do not make up the majority of the workforce, they made up  1.59% of all non-farm employees in the United States as of March 2025 – that’s 2.5M + people.

In this article, we will discuss examples of different types of temporary employees and the related training needs organizations must provide to enable these employees quickly. We’ll cover the challenges involved with building an L&D strategy and employee onboarding process for seasonal employees and temps, as well as the best practices for doing so effectively.

Use Cases for Training Temporary Workers

Temporary workers fulfill a given role for a specific period rather than indefinitely. Sometimes businesses do the hiring, and other times they use staffing agencies specialized in finding high-quality talent for temporary needs.

Whether companies offer seasonal products or services, adapt to economic or random events, hire temporary workers for special projects, or require additional hands in times of emergency, leaders who hire temporary employees need to ensure swift time to proficiency. This requires an efficient and effective onboarding process – from learning internal operations, handling customer situations, and understanding how to complete their task correctly.

Here are some common use cases for temporary workers and specific examples of relevant training activities for these seasonal team members.

• Insurance: For many insurance companies, times of high claim volumes, like hurricane and tornado seasons or catastrophes, can require them to hire temporary agents. Temporary insurance agents need training on the types of insurance they offer, unique company policies, compliance requirements, processing claims, and completing core tasks and responsibilities utilizing insurance software.
• Retail: In the retail industry, companies often hire temporary warehouse and frontline workers during busy times like the holiday season. These employees need efficient training to become experts in product and service offerings and become brand ambassadors quickly, as well as learn how to utilize POS and inventory management systems.
• Home contractors: Though generally considered self-employed, contractors are often hired by individuals and small businesses temporarily. Work volume fluctuates by specialty. For instance, contractors may see a spike in calls to install or repair heating and AC units at different times of year. When hired on behalf of a repair company, temporary contractors need training to understand project requirements and operating and reporting procedures.
• Taxes: During tax season, CPA firms often hire seasonal tax preparers to handle higher review and filing activities. They train these temporary workers on the firm’s policies and procedures, using tax software, and the ins and outs of tax return preparation.
• Postal services: The United States Postal Service experiences high mail volumes from October through the holiday season. Temporary postal service workers need effective training to understand postal service rules and regulations and day-to-day procedures.
• Teachers: Many educational institutions host intensive summer programs or summer camps in the summer. This requires them to hire instructors temporarily. Though instructors are often teachers during the school year or subject matter experts, they should receive training to understand program goals, curricula, and institution-specific procedures before the program begins.

Benefits of Onboarding and Training Temporary Employees

The benefits of training temporary employees are similar to those for permanent ones, but because they are expected to begin working quickly and often have a shorter amount of time to accomplish tasks, good training is paramount.

• Faster ramp-up: Proper training shortens the learning curve for new employees. Modern digital training tools like learning management systems (LMS) and digital adoption platforms (DAP) empower managers and learning and development teams  to deliver standardized training materials that expedites onboarding, provides hands-on training, and supports employees in the flow of work. These tools use personalization and AI to ensure that temporary employees only receive information relevant to their role.
• Fewer mistakes and risks: Better training leads to better work. Well-trained employees make fewer mistakes that could lead to complaints or compliance infractions by ensuring all temporary employees follow standard operating procedures.
• Higher performance and morale: Effective employee training leads to better performance outcomes, and often occurs in a group setting so employees can connect with their peers quickly. This sense of community in learning helps temporary employees feel secure and supported as they start their new roles.
• Stronger brand experience: By ensuring all temporary employees are familiar with specific company procedures, policies, and offerings, managers can ensure that their temporary employees are providing customers with positive experiences. By providing consistently positive customer experiences, leaders can increase customer satisfaction and brand trust, leading to a higher likelihood of repeat business and helping the company achieve overarching business goals.
• Better seasonal rehire pipeline: Temporary employees who connect with their temporary roles and have positive experiences are more likely to reapply for the next opportunity. By building a strong seasonal hiring and rehiring pipeline, leaders can ensure continued high performance as hiring cycles continue.

Ultimately, effective training leads to better work experiences and work outcomes for temporary employees, making it more worthwhile to continue hiring temporary staff.

Common Challenges in Temporary Employee Training

Due to the short-term nature of temporary employment, common training challenges can be magnified. Here are some prevalent challenges associated with training temporary employees:

• Short onboarding timelines: Typical onboarding is intensive at the start, but can last for many weeks into a team member’s tenure. When employees are hired for just a few days or weeks, spending this much time on training is not feasible. This requires L&D teams to design and execute relevant, personalized training that provides temporary employees with all the necessary information, but nothing extra or redundant. AI often powers workplace learning software like DAP, allowing leaders to create personalized lessons to streamline this process.
• Lack of long-term retention incentives: While training permanent employees, a key motivator is long-term growth. Securing this level of engagement or sign-on with temporary employees can be more difficult. To combat this challenge, L&D teams can build microlearning training programs or gamified lessons to keep learners engaged with built-in incentives.
• Varying experience levels: When hiring for a temporary role, companies often cannot require the same experience as they would for permanent roles. This may mean hiring employees who are jacks-of-all-trades. These employees may have many valuable skills, but lack experience in the precise area of the role. In this case, different employees need different levels of training and might respond to different formats or approaches. Managers can use workplace training software to deliver personalized learning to ensure everyone gets on the same page quickly.
• Limited manager bandwidth for 1:1 training: Managers are often under great pressure to meet high work volumes and execute projects when training temporary employees. This leaves less bandwidth for individualized, in-person training. The remedy: software like digital adoption platforms can deliver end-user software training that provides relevant, personalized support through onboarding. Incorporating peer-to-peer training or job shadowing can also be beneficial to help new hires understand expectations more quickly.
• Difficulty tracking training progress: As employees engage with different training materials and reach proficiency from various skill levels, keeping track of each trainee’s progress can be difficult. Modern training software tracks progress automatically, giving managers more time to keep operations moving forward.

Best Practices for Onboarding Seasonal and Temporary Staff

Despite the challenges, onboarding seasonal or temporary employees is vital to their success. Here are some best practices L&D teams can use to build effective training programs for temporary employees:

1. Create a standardized, repeatable onboarding program

First things first, lay the foundation for training by creating a basic onboarding framework that can be used across the board. Include aspects of training that every team member, regardless of function, should receive. This framework could include basic information about the business and its offerings, HR and payroll, and on-the-job safety. From there, plans can begin to be fleshed out.

2. Use role-specific training modules

Bring your standardized framework to life with modules specific to different roles. These modules should include role-specific processes, procedures, and anything temporary employees need to understand to carry out their responsibilities. These role-specific training modules ensure that trainees receive relevant, helpful information at every stage of training.

3. Provide hands-on training experiences

Whether temporary employees interact with customers in person or carry out their duties from behind a computer, hands-on training is key to effective onboarding. Integrate immersive training experiences to help employees learn by doing.

In the software space, Whatfix Mirror is a sandboxed training environment that replicates real applications without exposing live data or impacting production systems. It allows employees to safely practice complex workflows such as tax support processes or form submissions before going live. For instance, temporary insurance agents working in call centers can train on Mirror to master critical tasks without the risk of errors affecting customer experience. By learning in a risk-free, interactive environment, employees build both proficiency and confidence—two essentials for performance in fast-paced, high-stakes roles.

4. Embed performance support in the flow of work

Onboarding should be intuitive, timely, and non-disruptive. As temporary employees ramp up on workplace software, Whatfix enables them to learn directly in the flow of work through contextual, in-app guidance. Sitting seamlessly on top of existing applications, Whatfix provides real-time tooltips, walkthroughs, and nudges—helping users navigate unfamiliar tools without the need for formal training or external documentation.

Here are a few Whatfix DAP use cases for supporting your seasonal and temporary employees in the flow of work:

• Guiding new claims agents unfamiliar with state-specific regulations through process catastrophe claims after a hurricane or wildfire.
• Assisting new retail workers on how to utilize a POS system by providing embedded process support for tasks like refunds, manually adjusting price, check inventory, etc.
• Enabling seasonal tax professionals to utilize digital filing systems and customer portals.

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→ Guide users through complex apps with contextual, role-based in-app guidance.

→ Support users at the moment of need with AI-powered Self Help and embedded workflow assistance.

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5. Assign buddies or mentors for quick support

Create an onboarding buddy program that pairs your temporary team members with more experienced workers. This provides a direct channel for questions, conversation, and feedback to help new employees find connection, engagement, and a sense of community despite the short duration of their employment.

6. Track training progress and comprehension

Integrating training software with robust analytics tools will make it easy for managers to track onboarding progress and analyze training outcomes. This software measures performance against established metrics and benchmarks and can even use that data to automatically adapt training materials to improve the learning experience.

Ultimately, these tools help managers ensure that all temporary employees are well prepared as they start their new roles and measure training effectiveness to take a data-driven approach to improving onboarding and learning.

7. Enable microlearning

Set the tone for fast-paced, engaging work with microlearning. This approach to training involves short, hyper-focused learning activities that cater to shorter attention spans and get employees up to speed quickly. Many microlearning platforms include a mobile component, empowering temporary employees to learn according to their own needs and preferences, helping temporary team members reach true proficiency more quickly.

8. Embed safety and compliance training

Many temporary employees work on projects that require strict adherence to laws, regulations, and industry standards. Information about these requirements must be included and emphasized during new hire compliance training. Build safety and compliance into your training framework and include specific modules to drive messaging home. Ultimately, this aspect of training will help managers keep employees safe and avoid liabilities down the line.

With a DAP, you can embed task-specific compliance notifications that support your temporary employees in the flow of work. For example, you could:

• Create an in-app Smart Tip that overlays on an insurance claim’s “state” field, providing additional state regulations for agents processing the claim.
• Create an in-app POS alert for retail employees to ask for ID when selling items with age restrictions.
• Set up field validations that ensure new tax agents and accountants add in field data in the correct format before submitting tax reports.

Temporary Employee Training Template

Download our free temporary employee training template to seamlessly onboard your temporary workforce and set them up for success from day one.

Training Clicks Better With Whatfix

Build a better temporary workforce with optimized onboarding through Whatfix DAP.  By integrating with everyday workplace software, this solution easily guides new employees through training and ensures that temporary workers are well-prepared to meet and exceed expectations.

Whatfix DAP sits on top of digital applications to deliver in-application messages through tutorials, tooltips, and moment-of-need support. It also includes self-service support tools to help new hires help themselves overcome challenges in their new roles.

Whatfix Mirror delivers immersive, hands-on software training experiences by allowing learners to experiment with workplace software without impacting live data.  This helps employees acclimate to their roles quickly and develop their skills in a low-pressure environment. Whatfix Analytics allows managers to track learner progress, understand friction points, and collect feedback from a centralized dashboard.

Together, Whatfix helps managers create, deliver, and analyze training programs for temporary workers and provides individual team members with the information and resources they need to be successful.

Ready to learn more? Schedule your free demo today!