UK firms facing IT contractor conundrum

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IT departments are in a catch-22 situation when it comes to matching IT skills availability against cost, according to a new survey of 200 UK IT directors.

The independent research, carried out by market researcher Vanson Bourne, found 71 per cent of UK organisations revealed they had traditionally used contractors to deal with skills shortages.

But the lock-in this leads to is putting pressure on recruitment budgets, as the majority of IT contractors work for a fixed-contract term, which must then be extended as business-specific knowledge becomes siloed with them.

So much so, just over half of the respondents (52.5 per cent) believed that they were paying too much for contractors in order to access the specific skills and experience they required.

And 46 per cent of those surveyed said that they would prefer to hire additional, permanent in-house resource, but could not afford to do so because they had financial commitments to contractors.

Mike Devlin, director at business and IT consultancy Morse, which sponsored the survey, told IT PRO that organisations now have to pay a premium for the skills and experience of IT contractors that have business-specific skills or specialist domain expertise.

“Employing contractors can enable organisations to fill skills gaps quickly, but on the other hand it can make the IT department less flexible and unable to respond to the changing needs of the business,” Devlin said. “But these contractors often have to ‘go native’ to deliver.”

The research revealed that 71 per cent of organisations stated that they found it difficult to hire permanent people with the right skills and experience. And 72 per cent believed that a skills shortage was holding back the IT department and preventing it from taking on projects that could significantly improve the business’ bottom line.

Although the skills shortage is nothing new, Devlin said a different approach was needed to the traditional means of sourcing IT contractors. He suggested looking for flexible resourcing, where the supply of dedicated and cost-effectively skilled contractors is handled on a managed-service, rather than point-hire, basis.

“Flexible resourcing can be an attractive proposition for many businesses as they can turn on and off resources when required rather than committing to a costly contractor for a set amount of time,” he said.

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