Hiring a contractor? Here is what to keep in mind…

ON-DEMAND WORKFORCE AS A FUTURE OF WORKING 

Mobility and remote working are changing rapidly the landscape of the business today. People are opting more and more for the freedom to work where and for whom they choose. As of May 2015, 15.5 million people in the U.S. were self-employed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—an increase of roughly 1 million since May 2014. That number is expected to keep growing at a steady clip. By 2020, a separate study estimates that more than 40% of the American workforce, or 60 million people, will be independent workers—freelancers, contractors, and temporary employees.¹

It seems like the future of the job market lies in non-employee workers, according to a study from Fieldglass, a software company that provides vendor management systems, in partnership with Ardent Partners, a research and advisory firm. They surveyed 210 business professionals at small, medium and large businesses, and found that as of  2015, “nearly 35 percent of today’s total workforce is comprised of non-employee workers,” which includes temps, freelancers, contractors and statement of work-based labor. As a result, 95 percent of businesses now view this new workforce as a key element to developing and running a successful business.²

YOU WANT TO HIRE A CONTRACTOR?

Ok, so you want to hire a contractor. From an IT perspective, there is a classic approach which is expensive and not always optimal for compliance and security measures:

1. The cost of the managed device: The contractor needs to get access to the company`s files and applications in order to do their work. Usually, a company provides the device (laptop, tablet…) which put an extra burden on the budget. The costs have to cover hardware and the management of this device. Added to that there are also costs associated to set up a device and enable the right permissions for a contractor.
2. No usage audit: Following this practice, companies often don`t have a well implemented and proper usage auditing system. The auditing is quite tricky because obviously, companies can`t cross the limits of privacy laws. Bottom-line is that a lot of companies spend a great amount of money providing IT access to contractors without having any usage audit records in place.

AWINGU SIMPLIFIES THE MANAGING OF YOUR CONTRACTORS

With 95% of businesses seeing contractors as a key to their business, we anticipate their importance to grew even further towards the future. Choosing the right IT approach is key to control costs and increase security acompliancency. Awingu offers a great tool to help you in managing your contractors:

1. NO EXTRA DEVICE COSTS: The contractor can leverage BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) system. Forget the cost of the hardware or the cost to manage the device. No worries about the logistics cost to prepare the device, network access, permissions. Just allow the contractor to use his own device and access via browser your company`s files and application
2. NO SECURITY COMPROMISES: Awingu will give deep usage insights while getting a grip on data leakage…
   1. You can audit contractor`s usage of Awingu
   2. You can record application sessions of a contractor (useful when for ex interventions on a critical application)
   3. There is no local data stored on the device.
3. NO AUTHENTICATION HASSLE: For temporary contractors, you can leverage Multi-Factor Authentication. Generate an SMS (for example) as 2^nd factor authentication to the contractor for one-time access.
4. NO MOBILITY ISSUES: The contractor can work from where he wishes, as long as it`s compliant with the rules and wishes of the contracting company. This can potentially even drive additional savings in office space while contractors can benefit from mobile working.

Do you need more reasons? Let us know at info@awingu.com or try it yourself in a 14-days free trial!

SOURCE:

1. https://www.fastcompany.com/3049532/heres-why-the-freelancer-economy-is-on-the-rise
2. http://www.cio.com/article/3037004/careers-staffing/hiring-trends-for-2016-welcome-to-the-gig-economy.html