Organisations are wasting cash on contractors they may not need because of a failure to monitor in-house skills according to new research from skills management specialist, InfoBasis.
While 75 percent of companies use contractors, the vast majority do not carry out audits of their workforce to check whether contractor skills already exist in-house. Only 18 percent use skills management software to audit available, internal skills, according to the poll of 318 HR managers taken at this yearís CIPD[1] event in Harrogate. Contractor use was particularly high among public sector respondents. Over 90 percent of central and local government HR personnel respondents said they used them.
Ashley Wheaton, chief executive of InfoBasis, said the survey showed that organisations are paying out needlessly for expertise that they are likely to have in-house.
ìIt is only by carrying out a rolling assessment of internal skills that organisations are able to understand whether they can fulfil tasks or not,î he said. ìThe alternative is to pay someone else over the odds to carry out tasks within the capacity of your existing salaried staff.î
Wheaton added that keeping a close eye on skills could also help boost levels of staff retention.
ìLetting people do the things they are skilled to do gives them a sense of empowerment as well as greater job satisfaction,î he said. ìIf staff see outsiders come in to do jobs they are perfectly capable of doing themselves they will vote with their feet. At the same time, management is failing in its duty to ensure the organisation makes use of all its resources efficiently, including its pool of internal skills.î
Organisations wasting budget on needless contractor hires
Research shows that UK organisations fail to look within for answers to skills shortages
