A new round of hiring on freelancers, contractors, and umbrella workers is in the cards for the UK according to the newest research study.
The study, conducted by an online career website, found that a truly staggering number of small and medium-sized firms in the UK are quite keen to expand and grow, leading to a boom in hiring new staff over the next year. This includes not just your regular, run-of-the-mill permanent employees but temporary staff, freelancers, and umbrella contractors as well.
So how many firms are indeed planning to hire on additional workers in 2016? Well it was an overwhelming 77 per cent – much more than three out of every four – though the news wasn’t all tea and roses. In fact, this hiring spree could also be accompanied by some staff turnover thanks to the economy.
SMEs not prepared for the new hiring boom might have the most trouble this coming year, the survey said, especially when it came to turnover. Competition for a dwindling talent pool could prove problematic, especially since the stabilising economy is causing confidence to rise on the part of job-seekers willing to hold out for a better offer. This isn’t something that will only impede the smallest of SMEs, of course; just about every British business will be working hard to offer competitive pay packets to the few most-qualified jobseekers this coming year.
So what’s causing the sudden explosion in desire to hire on addtional staff? Well, the research says that some 71 per cent of respondents remarked that they experienced some rather unexpected and sudden growth in 2015, making it important to them to ramp up their hiring over the coming six months to a year. Meanwhile, teh Federation of Small Businesses says in an unrelated report that small firms are seeing their confidence grow as of late – something that is likely contributing to the growing call for expansion amongst the nation’s SMEs.
So once again, this is very good news for freelancers and umbrella company contractors, especially since it’s not likely there will not be enough permanent workers to go aroudn to fill all these many new roles. Regardsless of how much these SMEs want to expand, the skills shortage is still very much in effect in the UK, so thre may be little to no choice for a firm looking to grow its workforce: it will need to turn to temporary and contract workers, and probably in a big way.
