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Company shifts away from word ‘temp’
David O'Connor//January 1, 2016//
Listen to this article“Especially in the last decade or two, that word, ‘temp,’ has taken on a much more negative connotation,” the owner of a Camp Hill-based staffing company said.
“When you watch sitcoms and movies, you’ll hear references to ‘this strange temp they just hired’ or ‘she’s just a temp.’ And I started to realize that this has an effect on the people” who work in temporary or short-term jobs, Carchidi said.
Carchidi is CEO of JFC Staffing Cos., a firm started in 1975 by his parents, James F. and Linda Carchidi.
Figuring that the name “temps” might be outdated, he held a brainstorming session for all of his company’s 75 employees to think of a new name for JFC Temps, one of his company’s three umbrella organizations.
The one they chose? JFC Workforce, which replaced JFC Temps as of Dec. 4.
JFC has “long since removed the word ‘temps’ from our vocabulary, instead referring to these contract employees as ‘associates,’” Carchidi said. “In an effort to change the mindset towards the temp industry and its contingent workforce, we recently registered a new name, one that avoids that negative word.”
Still, JFC Temps was the name “for eons, almost since our founding,” so it wasn’t easy to say goodbye to it, Carchidi said.
“We asked, how do we preserve respect for what we had in the past but also evolve and adapt for the 21st century, especially as it relates to the negative connotations when it regards the word ‘temps,’ because there is one,” he added.
A national trend
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The change at JFC appears to be in line with what’s taking place nationwide in the workforce/staffing field, industry officials said.
