Contractors Aren’t Just a Solution for When You’re Desperate

There can sometimes be a perception that contractors are what you use when recruitment hasn’t gone to plan. A project is behind schedule, somebody has unexpectedly left or a permanent vacancy has been open for months, so eventually somebody says, “Can we get a contractor?”

In my view, that rather misses the point.

Used properly, a flexible workforce can be a strategic resource rather than an emergency measure. Engineering businesses frequently experience peaks and troughs in workload. New projects start, development programmes move through different phases and customer demand changes. Building your permanent headcount around the busiest period you might experience isn’t always commercially sensible.

Contract and temporary engineers allow businesses to bring in additional skills and capacity when they’re needed without necessarily creating a permanent overhead. They can also provide access to specialist experience for a particular phase of a project where there simply isn’t a long-term requirement for that skill within the organisation.

There are other benefits too. An experienced contractor who has worked across several engineering businesses can arrive with exposure to different systems, processes and ways of solving problems. They’re often accustomed to getting up to speed quickly because that’s exactly what their career has required them to do.

None of that means contractors should replace a strong permanent engineering team. Knowledge retention, continuity and developing people within the business remain enormously important. In most organisations, the permanent workforce should provide that foundation. The real opportunity is using flexible workers alongside it when workload or specialist requirements justify doing so.

Planning matters here as much as it does with permanent recruitment. If you know a project is likely to require additional resource in three months, starting those conversations early gives you a much better chance of securing the right people. Waiting until a deadline is already slipping inevitably reduces your options.

At ASL Technical, temporary and contract recruitment has always been a significant part of what we do. The businesses that get the greatest value from contractors tend to be those that regard them as part of their resource planning rather than simply the people they call when everything else has failed.

Final Thought

A contractor can certainly solve an emergency, but the greatest value often comes from bringing them in early enough to prevent the emergency happening in the first place.




Photo by ThisisEngineering on Unsplash

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Contractors Aren’t Just a Solution for When You’re Desperate
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Co-Founder & Director