Does your project need an extra pair of hands and possibly a set of eyes too for fresher perspectives? Is temporary bandwidth deficiency crippling your deliverables? Or is an inadequate budget constricting your talent acquisitions?

If yes, contingency staffing is your likely answer – A cost-effective way for businesses to make the most of manpower, with fewer strings attached.

The rudimentary concept of contingent work has been around for over centuries. Its origins can be traced far back to the 1700s, meshed with nascent stages of the Industrial Revolution. This model typically allows employers to work out a convenient arrangement with employees circumventing the usual entanglements experienced with official employees. Today, roughly 40% of workforce is contingent.

The term contingent employee points to a broad spectrum of workers whose business relationship with their employers comes with a calculated timeline. Such arrangements are ideally tailored to meet the befit the project requirements of the employer. Contingent workers can further be classified into temporary agency worker, seasonal worker and freelancer, among others.

1. The Financial Factor: This is the biggest benefit of having contingent employees. While you may get the same amount of work out of the employee as you would from your in-house employee, you don’t have to pay as much. Generally, the payment terms are agreed upon and are mostly based on the deliverables and not the hours put in. And since they aren’t permanent employees, they aren’t entitled to benefits, vacation pay or overtime.
Here are some of the advantages of Contingent hiring:

2. The “Specialist” Experience: It’s no secret that certain roles can be beyond the budget of small or medium businesses to afford an in-house position. And more importantly these roles may not even have perpetual responsibilities year-round. Let’s say your company is looking to revamp its website, and no one in your team has the necessary skills. Wouldn’t it make more sense to hire a specialist just for the task at hand.

3. The Flexibility Component: Contingent staffing houses a rather agile system where the employees are there to cater to your specific requirement (however out of the ordinary maybe). Be it a one-time gig or an agreement over a few months, once the terms are up the professional obligation ends. Choosing to work with them again or not can be at full :-) discretion of both parties. Clearly steering clear from the some of the awkward episodes with full time employees. Nobody’s hurt! 😊

Technology today is highly conducive for arrangements like Contingency Staffing. Employees can be reached out to and convened for meetings or discussions regardless of the intervening physical distance. So, basically you could have someone working for you halfway across the globe. Cost and time zone advantages can also be added bonuses in such scenarios.

Merraky is a global engineering services company providing best-in-class engineering design in embedded electronics, mechanical engineering, and manufacturing engineering. With its diverse skill pool, Merraky also offers staffing solutions. Headquartered in Bangalore, India, the company also has global operations in UK, USA, and Italy.