As famously said by Daniel Defoe, “Things as certain as Death and Taxes, can be more firmly believ’d.” In business, there are few expenses that “as certain” and they usually include everyday items, such as office supplies, electricity, and rent. Of course, if you are large enough to employ staff members, that’s an added cost that can become very high very quickly.
Hiring employees is expensive on many more levels than meets the eye. For starters, someone needs to craft a job description that accurately encompasses the skills and experience that you need for your team and distribute that posting through the website job boards and other appropriate channels so you can start attracting applicants. Once the description has been distributed, you must pay someone to wade through the sea of resumes that will surely hit his or her desk, searching for the needle in the resume haystack for those few people who may actually be a good fit. This all takes billable time, and you haven’t even hired anyone yet.
Now what? You’ll need to go through the interview process, and more than likely, you’ll have several staff members from your organization speaking to candidates throughout the process. Each time an interview occurs, you are pulling these staff members away from their regular work, which means that money is potentially being lost with each moment an incumbent is considered.
After you’ve hired someone, you’ll need to train them. Some estimates approximate that a new employee is paid over half their annual salary before they are able to actually start producing proper work for their new company. Obviously, this is an enormous cost, particularly for smaller businesses. Now that you’ve on-boarded your new hire, you’ll be subject to paying taxes for him or her, potentially contributing to benefits for this new person, and likely incur the cost of advancing this person’s training somewhere down the line.
All of this may be well-worth the cost if you have a huge project to undertake. New projects often involve a ton of manpower, so if all of your efforts produce a high-quality candidate, you may quickly see positive results from the addition of this new team member despite the high costs associated with the hiring and training processes. Keep in mind that once your project is completed, you’ll have an employee with nothing to do. This may present a whole new burden to your business, particularly if you’re not anticipating another big project for an extended period of time. If your company was operating well with the number of staff members you had prior to the onset of your recent project, you may feel a financial strain to hold on to your now unproductive new employee.
Many of our Optimum Systems Online clients have experienced this same frustration. One solution that has received acclaim has been the use of a flexible outsourced team. Flexible outsourced teams are groups of individuals that are offered to you by a third party company. These individuals will come to you trained with the skill sets that you’re looking for. Businesses that are undertaking a new project often find flexible outsourced teams to be beneficial because payment is only expected when the project is going on. You won’t have any obligation to find a place for these employees when the project is over. You’ll have a successfully completed project that was created with the help of the skilled professionals that made up your flexible outsourced team, and you’ll avoid the overhead costs that are often associated with training, hiring, providing benefits, and finding ongoing work for new employees.
Have you used flexible outsourced teams for your past projects? We would love to hear about your experiences! Share your thoughts with us in the comments section.
