Five Reasons for Outsourcing Your 2018 Hires

Hiring a subcontractor, freelancer, consultant or temp to perform services traditionally performed by a company's own staff and resources provides multiple benefits. It reduces costs, frees up time to the business and improves efficiency on project execution. In fact, there has been a 55% increase in contingent jobs being advertised in APAC since 2013 showing the mind shift to pay for service is more popular than ever.

The most consistent increase in the flexible engagement of staff has been in the Resources, Engineering, Construction and Utilities sector growing to 34.3% of the overall workforce. In the engineering sector, small and large firms find it beneficial to outsource technical services to meet their business needs, and they have adopted this with 2.9% growth in contingent hires in 2017 alone. Here are the top reasons why you should outsource your project team in 2018.

1. Cost and Time Savings

One of the main reasons you should outsource is to save money and time. For example, if you need to complete a design competition or executing a large project. Instead of recruiting, hiring and training people, you can simply outsource the skill required for the duration of the project. You will see that it is much easier to develop your product / Service when it's handled by experts with the adequate skills. They can develop innovative projects in a short amount of time, which eliminates the time and cost of training. They are paid more on a day rate than permanent employees but studies have shown that they are sometimes paid only 4% more than employees by the time you take into account staff costs including: insurance, statutory required costs, training, IT and benefits.

2. Reduce Entitlement Costs

Hiring contractors can provide more flexibility and in some cases reduce the company cost of benefits, severance, taxes and a full-time salary. As you may know, employees and outsourced contractors have different rights and obligations. Employers usually have to pay wages, holidays, sick leaves, and insurances to their employees. On the other hand, contractors do not receive such advantages, as they are outside of the company. Their insurances and taxes are usually paid either by the consulting company or the contractor himself. However, be careful and avoid using employees and disguising them as contractors, in order to save costs. This practice is known as "sham contracting" and is illegal. Outsourcing has great advantages but do it in an honest and legal way.

3. Focus on "Core Competencies"

According to businessman Mark Cuban, "companies have to know their core competencies and focus on being great at them". He is absolutely right. If you want to follow this approach, outsourcing engineers can be a smart and an economical strategy. Let them be the ones responsible of engineering and maintenance processes. By bringing technical specialists, you will perform faster and allow your energy to be used into the most fun parts of your business. Do what you are best at!

4. Learn from Experts

Whenever you have issues in your life, you often turn to your friends and family for their advice and opinions, right? Well, it is the same with companies. They often need an outside eye, in order to grow and innovate. For this reason, outsourcing can be a competitive advantage and give you access to rare resources that are not available internally. Indeed, external firms can quickly deliver senior talents with a wide range of skills and fresh perspectives. They can provide substantial improvements, innovation, and creativity to your engineering projects.

And the good news is that DARE has experienced and high-performing consultants that can teach you things you have never known before! We believe in sharing experiences and knowledge, we believe in mentoring and training our youth, we pride ourselves on facilitating knowledge transfer.

5. Flexibility – Get with the gig economy!

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, most American workers will switch jobs 10 to 15 times between the ages of 18 and 48. There is an emerging trend towards the outsourcing/decentralizing model, as companies want to increase their flexibility. Hiring contractors allows you to pay for a service only when you need it. For example, if you are planning to manufacture a hydraulic system, you can easily hire a mechanical engineer contractor knowing that he will be gone when the job is finished. This can be very advantageous for companies with fluctuating workloads!

Besides, workers tend to look for jobs that are more flexible and that have a better work/life balance. With the use of Internet, it becomes much easier to work in different countries, on different projects, for different companies, etc. Being a contractor allows to have more flexibility and grow skills and knowledge, by discovering different work environments.

In conclusion, outsourcing brings a lot of benefits when companies carefully use it. This practice can be very beneficial, especially for short-term or specialized projects. According to Deloitte, outsourcing will continue to expand at rates ranging between 12% and 26% in the next years. Indeed, with world's globalization and the Internet of things, many companies are hiring contractors for their projects. Besides, there are many worldwide consultancy companies that offer subcontractor services to both large and small businesses.

-Vía Dare Energy

January 10, 2018