Managing Poly-Employment: A Recruiter’s Guide to the New Workforce Reality

Single-employer loyalty may no longer define the modern workforce, with poly-employment, where people hold two or more jobs steadily emerging as a lasting feature of today’s labour market.  According to the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics)  in June 2025, 6.4 per cent of employed Australians, around 948,900 people held multiple jobs, with women (7.5 per cent) more likely than men (5.1 per cent) to do so, the highest rate among 20- to 24-year-olds (7.0 per cent) and community and personal service workers (10.4 per cent). 

Poly-employment isn’t just about making ends meet, it empowers workers with greater control over their finances, allowing them to choose additional roles and shape their work schedules around their individual needs and lifestyles. 

Navigating the Complexity: Risks, Realities & Recruitment Smarts 

Poly-employment complicates your world across three core dimensions: availability, compliance, and retention. For recruiters, these bring genuine risks and operational strain, and the scepticism surrounding them is completely understandable. But let’s explore how these doubts can be reframed into opportunities instead.

• Availability & scheduling friction 
  A candidate may already commit 20 hours elsewhere, limiting when they can take on your shifts. Rigid rostering risks overruns or gaps. 

• Compliance, pay-rules and turnarounds 
  Managing overtime, breaks, penalty rates or cross-employer rules becomes trickier when someone is working across multiple entities. Different awards or clients may have overlapping rules you must monitor. 

• Higher turnover & shifting loyalties 
  If a better side gig emerges, your candidate might shift priorities. The perception of loyalty weakens when workers feel empowered to mix and match income sources. 

Yet these challenges open doors, if you adapt intentionally. 

• A larger, more flexible talent pool 
  Workers no longer need exclusivity. Many prefer stacking roles to spread income sources. That means you can recruit from a broader base, even from “active elsewhere” workers. 

• Skill diversity & cross-pollination 
  A nurse doing part shifts at a wellness clinic or a retail casual picking up hospitality shifts bring cross-functional strengths. You can lean on hybrid roles, training synergies or stretch assignments. 

• Better retention through flexibility
  Emma Seymour, CFO at Deputy, told Yahoo Finance that allowing poly-employment within reasonable limits can improve retention, when workers are free to take extra shifts elsewhere, they’re less likely to leave altogether, and many employers now view flexibility as a key strategy for keeping talent.
  
  
• Predicting full-time potential
  You can now track when “side-giggers” are ready or interested in a full-time role with available integration between XR or EOH. This connection syncs candidate data, shift history, and engagement across both platforms, allowing recruiters to see who’s consistently performing, available for more hours, or showing signs of long-term commitment. In practice, this means recruiters can identify high-potential casuals in EOH and easily transition them into permanent roles in XR or move the other way when full-timers are looking for extra shifts creating a unified talent ecosystem.

One more dimension: it’s not just casuals. Even full-time employees increasingly pick up weekend or evening side jobs to protect their income buffer, or simply for intellectual stimulation. According to a Forbes article on microshifting, one in five employees in US, now holds multiple jobs, balancing side hustles alongside their primary employment.  

Think of it as a kind of mental workout, a way to keep fresh, expand networks and hedge risk. As recruiters, empathy is key: your candidates’ motivation often stems from rising living costs, mortgage stress, household budgets or the need for extra cash flow. Recognising that reality helps you build trust, not walls of “you must commit 100% to us.”

Practical Playbook: Systems, Strategy & Stackable Hiring 

Here’s how staffing businesses can manage poly-employment effectively without sacrificing operational efficiency. 

• Build transparency and flexible shift frameworks
  Encourage candidates to declare their existing commitments. Design shifts with buffer windows rather than fixed blocks, so they can pick complementarities. Encourage open discussion when conflicts arise, transparency lowers the chance of hidden no-shows.
   
• Tier your candidate pool by availability
  Segment your talent pool: 
  - Core-exclusive (few commitments) offer premium or high-value clients 
  - Secondary shifters (balanced availability) 
  - Side-giggers (limited windows, but usable)
  Tailor client offerings to each tier. You might assign core-exclusive workers to longer clients, while leveraging secondary ones for fill gaps. 
  
  
• Automate compliance & overlapping rules
  Invest in rostering or workforce platforms that flag conflicts in compliance across roles. Use alerts to catch when a worker is approaching total weekly caps across employers. 
  On that front, the XR ↔ EOH integration is a strategic asset. With data sync enabled between XeopleRecruit and Entire OnHire, sharing clients, candidates, job profiles and member status across both platforms. 
  This integration lets you monitor who among your casuals could transition to a full-time or primary role, and vice versa, offering pathways without breaking the vendor relationship.
  
  
• Incentive models tied to reliability, not exclusivity
  Rather than demanding exclusivity, reward reliability: e.g. bonus or priority access when a person stays for X confirmed shifts over a quarter or offers first choice of premium shifts if they maintain above, say, 90% acceptances. That encourages commitment without demanding restriction. 

Poly-employment isn’t a temporary blip; it’s a structural evolution. For staffing businesses that cling to old exclusivity models, the result will be friction, attrition, and shrinking talent pools. But for those that build with adaptability in mind, the rewards are richer access, stronger retention, and smarter talent flows. 

By combining transparent processes, tiered availability, automated compliance, and a strategic XR ↔ EOH sync, you can transform complexity into competitive advantage. Let poly-employment work for you, not against you. 

If you want help implementing the XeopleRecruit-Entire OnHire integration or building these tiered workflows in your agency, contact us today and find out how your recruiters can keep pace in the new normal.