People Per Hour recently surveyed 9,000 businesses about their usage of freelancers and discovered that the number of businesses using flexible workers has risen by 68% in the last 12 months.
71% of the respondents said they decided to use freelancers as a way to save costs and increase flexibility.
The study found that freelancers were most likely to be used in the IT and web design sectors, but accounting, legal services and marketing firms also expressed an interest in flexible workers.
The current turbulent economic climate is undoubtedly putting employers off making permanent hires and this has encouraged a large percentage of companies to carry on using contractors. Some of the businesses that made large-scale redundancies have now turned to umbrella company contractors to help them over busy periods and they have discovered this is a cost-effective way of sourcing expertise.
Iain McIlwee, from the PCG, explained that it is reasonably easy to get a freelancer at short notice and as well as being more results-driven than permanent employees, they can bring a new perspective into the company. He estimated that 5% of employees in the UK are now working as freelancers.
Meanwhile, AWR is implemented next week and the REC’s most recent JobsOutlook suggests that only 17% of employers are planning to reduce their use of temporary workers in the final quarter of 2011.
61% of employers claimed they intend to maintain their use of agency workers at the same level as it is now, while 22% plan to increase their usage of temps over the short-term. The picture actually looks better over the longer-term as 86% say they will maintain or increase the number of temps they use in the next 12 months.
The outlook for permanent staff is not quite so good with just 53% of employers planning to increase the size of their permanent workforce in the run up to the new year.
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Image: rubber by Joost J. Bakker IJmuiden
