When most of the hires you make are permanent (and when you yourself are in a permanent role) the contract market can be a confusing place. All the same, as businesses grow, projects come up which are best handled by professionals working with you for a short-term period. Advertising a fixed-term placement can be tempting – it’s the same process as a permanent role, so it’s familiar – but is it really the best choice for you?
Day Rate Contractor vs. Fixed Term Placement
I want to look at two big factors affecting your decision in this blog. One of them is cost; the other is suitability to the role.
Received wisdom among many hiring managers is that paying for a fixed term placement is cheaper than paying for a day rate. Like most received wisdom, it’s not necessarily true. In this case I’d say it’s false more often than not!
Factoring in holiday pay, sick days, and more with a salaried role and the amount you’re spending goes up; most of that expense is absorbed into other budgets so it can be easy to overlook, but it’s there. The values are a lot closer together than you might think – and depending on the exact numbers, a day rate contractor might be better financially and more beneficial to the project.
In terms of suitability to the role, the answer will depend on the specific role. However, tasks like HRIS implementation benefit from someone with plenty of experience of successful implementations and what we see with contractors is their average times is 6-9 months with one client then they move on to the next one, picking up constant experience in different sectors and this means this is someone who’s used to getting up and running fast in a new work environment and bringing different industry experience to the table.
Usually that’s the day rate contractor – fixed term team members may be looking for something shorter between permanent roles, or only transitioning from permanent to contract, and they have very different experience.
You might prefer someone who’s used to making themselves part of a business quickly and putting down roots if the role is a single individual who’ll have to work closely with an existing, in-house team. For that, fixed term roles tend to be more appropriate.
Day rate contractors are a great way to gain access to knowledge and experience you’ll only need for a specific project – such as a full implementation/migration or configuration of certain modules to get your HRIS system where it should be, your HRIS system is there to benefit you and make processes quick, not hinder you/your company.
To discuss your HRIS requirement in more detail, give me a call and I’ll be happy to help you find the candidates you need.
