6 advantages of using a temporary workforce in construction.
- specialist skills and labour
- cheaper financing
- pay per project
- agile and flexible business
- withstand market fluctuations
- pay for results
1. Specialist skills and labour
By making it possible for businesses to use highly specialised labour and sub-contractors, it generates huge cost-saving and productivity gains. Studies by the Centre for research on self-employment (CRSE) revealed that by using freelancers instead of employees for specialist functions, it avoids idle, unused labour downtime.
Labour cost savings of 27 - 86 per cent per project can be gained with the method. When the labour work required is both short-term and highly specialised, savings are at their greatest. In these situations, the use of full-time workers would be to slow, involve excessive downtime and create unwanted excess overhead costs.
2. Cheaper financing
Freelancers make finance for construction projects cheaper and easier to find by allowing businesses to de-risk their projects. This adds a further boost to the industry’s economic activity.
3. Pay as you go projects
By allowing businesses to use a ‘pay per project or task’ variable cost model, it lowers the risk of construction ventures. This also enhances the expected return on investment, thereby increasing the total industry output.
4. More agile and flexible business
Helping the construction industry to utilise a lean entrepreneurship management technique, allows lower fixed and sunk capital costs for each building project. They also make companies of all sizes much more agile and flexible. This allows Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to compete with larger firms as there is less need for a large diverse range of internal employees that a freelance team can cover. For the industry, this promotes a more competitive landscape, which improves choice, quality and price for private and public consumers.
5. Maintain under market fluctuations
By being able to manage fluctuations in demand, it encourages growth in industry highs and softens potential business failures when the market demand falls below expectation.
6. Paying for results, not actions
If your business can pay for output rather than input, building project costs are more predictable, reduce risk and fewer managerial resources are needed to monitor labour productivity. Paying based on output instead of according to hours worked can also boost productivity by aligning the interests of the worker and company.
Freelancers accounted for 51 per cent of workers on these projects and 57 per cent of workdays on average reports from 2010, 2013 and 2017. In the same group, freelancers hold the middle ground of average pay, none were the lowest nor the highest as both were owned by employees. This rejects the assumption that freelancers are a risky job role and vulnerable.
Without freelancers’ contribution, the construction industry would be smaller and would hire fewer workers. It would also be less entrepreneurial and efficient.
Find out how to ensure temporary workers want to work with you by reading our report here.
