Hiring a temp or contract employee can be a highly resourceful and useful solution. They can have numerous benefits to a business, here are some of them:
Speed
Ever got to the point where the workload has increased out of control to only have more added to your plate? Projects commence, employee absence is high, or it is peak season? Hiring a contractor enables you to respond to business and workflow fluctuations as and when required. The beauty of this is you don’t have the wait times of hiring a permanent employee, you can have someone commence work as soon as that exact same day. It can also be a quick fix when you experience employee turnover.
Flexibility
We all know the cost of hiring the wrong employee. This equates to approximately 150% of the employee’s annual salary. If a contractor isn’t working out, not delivering what they are assigned, or are the wrong cultural fit for the team, you have the flexibility to terminate the assignment right away. Alternatively, hiring a contractor to permanent arrangement gives you the flexibility to ‘try before you buy’ to not only evaluate the candidate before committing but also evaluate whether the business really needs a full-time resource. Hiring through an agency also means the administration burden is taken off you.
Cost efficiency
Hiring a contractor can often be more cost effective than hiring a full-time employee. It removes the fixed salary cost from your budget and you only pay for the work, and hours, that are completed. You can allow them to ‘scale in and scale out’ as and when required when business demands.
Tap into new thinking and ideas
Looking to investigate a new idea or initiative or simply need a fresh set of eyes on something? A great way to investigate this is to bring in a contractor for a specific project to evaluate what is worth doing, and to get a fresh set of eyes on circumstances. They may well stay on, or you may eventually bring an internal person into the mix and backfill their position. It is the initial momentum they can provide without upsetting business as usual, that presents the opportunity.
Buy in specific expertise
I read a report recently which stated that executives and senior leaders would often prefer to buy in a specific set of skills for a shorter period of time to achieve a business objective. This can also be known as the ‘Gig’ economy. Contractors are often highly skilled, with niche skillsets and are used to working on specific projects in a shorter period of time. Hiring someone of this nature can often help drive your business or team forward.
Here are just a few examples of where contractors have helped our clients:
- A recent resignation – the organisation hired a contractor to bridge the gap which gave them the time to revaluate and rescope the role without the time, pressure or burden on the team
- An additional set of hands during end of financial year with delivering reporting and the annual audit
- Delivery of change management strategies for a large ERP project
- Finding efficiencies in an IT system that has everyone overwhelmed in the day-to-day
- Discovery of business improvement initiatives across workflow
- Evaluating whether a new HR System will in fact deliver on the benefits promised
If you think you might like this type of valuable resource, reach out to Optimum Consulting.