Why Hire Consultants

It’s an increasingly familiar scenario in today’s business world for talented professionals to leave their firms and return to the workforce as consultants. Now, employers are being replaced with clients and these professionals are getting paid with vendor relationships as corporation-to-corporation consulting, instead of as W-2 employees.

Contingent workers such as independent consultants are becoming an ever-increasing segment of the American workforce:

• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of computer systems analysts and engineers working as temps or as contract workers increased from 76,000 in 1995 to 107,000 last year, an increase of almost 41%. Last year, about 6% of all computer programmers were temporary workers, and that number was nearly 15% for systems analysts.
• Microsoft isn’t alone in its heavy use of temporary workers. Compaq Computer Corp., for instance, employs about 8,900 temporary and contract workers, which represents about 21% of its total workforce of more than 41,000.
• The contingent workforce already numbers one in every five American workers.
• In some high-tech firms, the percentage of contingent workers is already 30%.

And the trend isn’t anywhere near peaking. The Department of Labor, in fact, states that within five years, the biggest employer in America will be “Self.” And some experts say that one out of every three workers in this country may soon be part of the contingent workforce.

So we ask the question – Why hire consultants? The answer is simple. There’s ever-increasing pressure on corporate America to manage growth in the business population and maintain overhead so that it is not a direct reflection of corporate inadequacies. The new concern is the ability to be lean and flexible in order to successfully meet the challenges of the new economy. This must be accomplished while lessening the chance of having to implement layoffs should the economy falter.

But the demand from the market persists and the work must get done. This is where consulting staff comes in. Companies are realizing that independent contractors, because of their diverse professional experience, often possess a wealth of knowledge that can exceed that of their regular employees; and it can be utilized without having to pay employment taxes or provide benefits.

Demand for products and services are constantly fluctuating in this ever-changing economy. Why feel the pressure to hire permanent staff during growth only to lay them off during a slow down? And why spend time and money training and administering permanent employees if you don’t have to? Remy can lower your resource costs while increasing the return of your IT investment. This is accomplished with our highly qualified independent consultants through Remy’s Consulting, Staffing and Applications Support services.