Contract Staffing – Are We Better Off With Or Without

By Author: synchro systech
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Contract staffing is a rising trend in India. According to latest figures available, the IT sector comprises of about 5% contract workers, and the percentage is slowly rising. Contract staffing is also seen in other areas too, particularly manufacturing.

What is contract staffing?
As the term suggests, contract staffing is when organizations hire resources from another organization for a specified period of time to complete certain projects where they may or may not have expertise in. The term is usually pre-specified, or is dependent on the duration of the project. Contract staffing between organizations is pretty common in the IT sector, where organizations often loan their employees to their clients.

Reason behind the rise in trend
1. While contract staffing in the US has been around for quite some time, it has seen an upward trend in India only in recent years. There are several plausible reasons for the rise in the trend, some of which are:
2. Fluctuating project load- Often, industries experience fluctuating project loads. Again, the IT sector is known to have lows and highs ...
... in getting orders and executing them. Contract staffing acts a quick and efficient solution to ramp up capacity during the high peaks and ramp down when needed
3. Managing Skill Gap – Contract Staffing allows companies to acquire new skills where they don’t have the required competencies. Instead of loosing opportunities because of the skill gap, companies find it worthwhile to acquire those skills inorganically by engaging contract staff from a specialized organization and train their employees over a period of time.
4. Quick backfill – When organizations’ delivery commitments are likely to fail because of attrition and hiring permanent employees becomes a time consuming process, Contract Staffing becomes a more viable solution to manage the interim. Ideally contract resources are available within 30-45 days whereas a whole process of hiring permanent employees from raising the recruitment request to joining takes about 3-4 months
5. Many organizations strategically decide not to hire permanent employees in the non-core areas. They rather feel it is appropriate to either outsource the job to a third party agency specializing in the specific area or hire contract resources from those agencies to manage the particular job in house. Either way it saves the organizations from diverting their focus from their core business areas, which otherwise can have a long term negative repercussion

The workforce in India, which used to think of a secured long-term job some years back, has now gradually started to think more of becoming a specialist in their own skill areas and acquire super specialization as they move in the career lader. That opportunity could only be available if they focus more on the project that they work on rather than the company. Here contract staffing companies are of great help. Contract staffing has come under a lot of criticism from some sections of the society primarily because of the misconception that contract staffing agencies do not offer equal employment benefits to the on-site employees as in the case of permanent employees. They believe that those resources are simply dumped at the client location without caring for their personal and profession development. This is absolutely not the case. In today’s world, contract staffing companies offer the same or sometimes even better perks to attract good talent.

Overall Contract staffing provides a win-win situation for all stake-holders, the organizations, the employees and the Industry. Contract staffing model gives flexibility to the companies to go for hiring for their temporary need, which otherwise could have been resulted in a no-hiring situation. It gives ample opportunity for candidates to know of the market trends for the skills in demad, allows the candidate pick the right skill of their interest and find the right project and company to work for. Staffing companies contribute immensely in making this happen. At the end, the industry grows so as the buying power and quality of living.

To know more information about Contract staffing, please browse our website: www.synchrosystech.com or you can directly contact us through our e-mail id: info@synchrosystech.com.