The Asian market continues to boom, but workload and business demands do fluctuate throughout the fiscal year and as a result businesses are now embracing contract recruitment, according to Emma Charnock, Regional Director of Hays Accountancy & Finance in Hong Kong, who here explores the trend.

While traditionally employers would only consider permanent employees, now businesses are using contract workers for short-term, ad hoc requirements. This is a major change to the recruitment market, and is usually a result of peaks in workloads, since contract workers can allow continuity of work without disruption. They are enthusiastic and innovative, and they also allow a business to employ specific skills only when required.

Contract staff ensure that during times of peak workloads, permanent staff do not undertake excessive overtime to cope. As they are an interim resource, they are retained only for as long as their skills are required and until workloads return to usual levels.

For employers, the flexibility of bringing in interim and contract staff during these peaks and then releasing them in the troughs is undoubted. Employers can operate on an 80% workforce during the quieter times and increase to 100% by hiring a specialist interim team. The interim staff can carry out non-critical and administrative tasks that frees up the permanent team to concentrate on the job in hand. This ultimately reduces the need, and added cost, of overtime.

Contract staff are also being used to ensure workloads are completed while a permanent staff member is sourced, to fill gaps created by staff leave or sickness, or to work on systems implementation and upgrade projects.

Source: Hays Hong Kong