Work cultures are evolving. Employees are looking to work with companies that offer them flexibility in work timings, location, and more. Post-pandemic, most people have realized the importance of work-life balance, so a shift in work cultures is taking place. As a result, most companies, including the technology sector, are changing their staffing policies to make room for flexible staff-like independent contractors, associates, and part-time employees. But what are flexible hiring and staffing? We’ll tell you all about it in this blog and help you understand the advantages of customized hiring.
What is Flexible Hiring?
Flexible recruitment involves hiring temporary employees instead of permanent in-house staff to fulfill an operational business requirement.
Traditionally, employers used to hire a permanent employee if there was a staff shortage. But, it is a time-consuming and expensive affair. Moreover, most employees prefer a flexible work opportunity over a permanent nine-to-five. Apart from that, an employer and a permanent employee must adhere to several legal restrictions and compliances.
Instead, when an employer chooses flexible staffing, their legal liabilities are significantly reduced. It has also proved to be cost-effective in the longer run. You might need in-house staff for certain positions, but you can always opt for flexible recruits wherever possible.
Talent management strategies are also continuously growing. Tech companies must address innovative technologies, understand market shifts and assess their corporate goals in order to succeed. So, the transition towards a flexible talent management model is helpful as it allows to fill of skill gaps in a company’s in-house team with the help of freelancers and independent contractors.
Flexible hiring is further used to cater to temporary workforce requirements to complete projects and give access to specialists with a particular skill stack on an as-needed basis.
When can Employers Opt for Flexible Staffing Solutions?
As a technology business, your company will have various situations where you can choose a flexible tech hiring model. They are:
- Filling up a temporary staff gap. For instance, when your in-house employee takes maternity leave.
- If you are a startup that wants to avoid investing in permanent employees.
- To meet a rise in employee demand based on the project size and deadlines.
- To create an agile team with specialized skills irrespective of their geographical location.
It is essential to note that such recruits are not on a company’s payroll. They work for the company as long as they have a requirement, and in return, the employees are compensated for the finished tasks.
4 Types of Flexible Employees
You can hire flexible employees for various reasons but check the different types of temporary staff available:
Independent Contractors
Independent contractors can consist of a single employee or a company that offers their services under a verbal or written agreement.
Independent contractors are assigned projects or tasks by the company and are usually compensated for the same after completion. Once the task is done, they typically start working on another task for a different client.
The best part is that as an employer, you do not have to give them employee benefits like medical insurance, retirement plans, and bonuses.
Leased Employees
Tech employers hire or lease out a portion of their workforce to an external agency. Certain small businesses hire their entire staff from an agency to avoid investing effort and money in the hiring process.
Companies might lease out employees for a limited time or long term based on their requirements. Also, the staffing company is responsible for paying the employees in such arrangements.
Temporary Employees
You can directly hire employees under a short-term contract if the work requires less than 40 hours per week.
You can also hire part-time employees or remote workers hourly based on your requirements. Although, this type of recruitment will require you to be entirely responsible for sourcing, onboarding, and paying the flexible worker.
Hire Through a Staffing Company
A staffing company usually helps companies source flexible talent based on their requirements. They allow you to look for global talent for a limited time, like 3 months, 6 months, or 12 months.
In return, you only have to pay a small commission to the tech hiring platform. Plus, it is worth noting that this hiring model is slightly different from the leased employees’ type as you will be responsible for the payments, and not the agency.
If you are still unsure about flexible hiring models, let’s take a look at their benefits.
Key Benefits of Adopting Flexible Tech Hiring Model
Cater to Issues with Rigid Staffing
Losing employees for various reasons can cause disruptions to business processes. Also, meeting the skill gap with permanent employees might be a bit of a struggle in specific domains.
Although to meet the skill gap, companies are constantly trying to re-hire permanent employees for different vacancies.
But, hiring permanent employees requires a lot of resources as it requires sourcing talent and having finances to onboard them. Also, identifying the right talent is becoming challenging for employers.
Recruiting temporary staff seems like a viable option to cater to this situation. It gives you quick access to the talent required for the job, and you can stop engaging with them once your requirement is met.
A flexible tech hiring model can offer you a more holistic solution that improves your business processes and helps you dump the disruptive cycle of hiring and layoffs. In the longer run, it can help to reduce the workload of your in-house core team as well.
Get Access to a Pool of Talent
Tech companies often face challenges while finding the right employees because they are rigid about hiring talent from a particular location.
But, when you are open to flexible and remote workers, you can easily find many good options. When companies are not rigid about hiring in-house employees, they can look for workers from across the globe and find developers with specialized skill stacks.
When you adopt the flexible tech hiring model, you can untap local markets and open possibilities to hire skilled and affordable foreign talent.
Tackle Business Challenges Effectively
Even if you plan your business operations strategically, you will always face unexpected conditions that affect your business negatively. For example, consider the drastic change in economic conditions during the pandemic. They changed the dynamics of a lot of businesses.
However, a flexible staffing model can offer adaptability during unexpected circumstances and ensure your company’s longevity.
This is possible because a flexible staffing solution allows you to adjust your workforce based on your evolving requirements and business challenges. So, you can shrink your workforce when your workload is less, but you can always hire more staff when you have a lot of projects onboard.
Apart from this, there are a lot of other added benefits of recruiting a flexible staff like:
- You only pay when you make the talent work on a task
- You can substitute bad hires with suitable talent
- Get affordable access to specialized talent
- You can decrease the workload of your core employees and use them for more value-adding tasks
Also, over time you can build a community of flexible talent to fulfill the requirements immediately after they arise.
Helps to Focus on Core Business
Business owners from non-technical backgrounds can hire remote developers or designers to complete their tasks, as it offers the flexibility they need.
Once their tech department is sorted, entrepreneurs can focus on critical aspects of their business like sales, marketing, client relations, and development.
Also, hiring flexible workers can help you to scale your business as needed with lesser risks and overhead costs.
Why Should You Consider Outsourcing Your Recruitment?
When adopting a flexible tech hiring model, it is a good idea to outsource the recruitment process to an agency. It will save a lot of time, as tech hiring agencies usually have a pool of sourced talent. They typically recommend them to you based on your requirements.
Some of the reasons to consider a hiring platform are:
Save Time
A lot of your time can go into sourcing and screening candidates. On top of that, you need a recruitment team to help you with the entire hiring process, which can require a lot of effort and money.
Instead, asking a hiring platform for help can save you a lot of trouble. Hiring platforms usually have a pool of screened developers. So, when you go to them with your requirements, they will usually be able to suggest a candidate immediately.
Looking for Specialized Skills
Hiring platforms have a mix of talent registered on their portal. When you are looking for a candidate with specialized skills, chances are that the recruitment platform already has someone. Also, they have talent from across the world.
When you try to source such a candidate yourself, you might take a lot of time to find someone. Instead, getting help from a recruitment platform can help you hire quickly.
Better Turnover
When you hire permanent employees, you will spend a lot of energy and resources training them. And they might leave after some months, which can cost you significantly.
You can avoid this by hiring flexible employees through an agency because they have a database of experienced candidates willing to do the task. Also, these workers can join immediately if you have a vacant position.
At the same time, hiring platforms usually suggest candidates with the skill you are looking for, so you don’t need to spend your resources on training them. Instead, you can just explain the task and expect them to start working.
How to Hire Flexible Tech Staff with Workfall?
Workfall is a tech hiring platform that allows you to hire global developers within 24 hours based on your requirements. We have a rigorously vetted screening process for our software developers, so you can be assured of getting the best quality flexible staff.
We have a system that matches the ideal candidate to your tech needs. You can hire flexible candidates for 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months.
Our 5 step screening process includes human intervention at every step. The process looks like this:
Step 1: Application
The candidate (5+ years of hands-on coding experience) has to fill in their details through our portal and send it to us.
Step 2: Technical Assessment
Our team thoroughly evaluates candidates’ profiles based on their specializations and past and current work experiences.
Step 3: Coding Assessment
It is a detailed evaluation round where we assess the candidate’s tech competence through coding and architecture tests.
Step 4: Background Verification
We run background checks on the coders to ensure that they hold the necessary credentials and qualifications.
Step 5: Personal Screening
If the candidate passes our assessment round, we conduct an interview. Our recruiting team gets in touch with the candidate to check their communication skills, language fluency, and overall personality.
Only 3% of the candidates screened qualify to become a Workfall Partner.
It is a straightforward process, and you don’t have to worry about the quality of work of your flexible staff. Adopting a flexible staffing module can definitely do more good than bad for your tech company. If you haven’t considered it, you should take that first step today with Workfall!