Every day, tens of thousands of people stream into some of the biggest offices in the country, wearing one of two coloured ID badges. One identifies the person as a permanent employee, while the other shows the person is a third-party contractor. Contributor Graham Smith, Head of marketing at Microsoft recruitment partner – Curo Talent.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), predict that every time a business replaces a salaried employee, it costs 6 to 9 months’ salary. The cost of hiring a contractor can be equally high. Your hiring strategy needs to work; getting it wrong can be costly, and getting it right requires informed decisions.

In Curo Talent’s latest report: IT Talent Acquisition; the candidate’s view 2019, 875 IT contractors and IT permanent workers from across the United Kingdom gave their opinion on employment issues. There is some distinction between temporary and permanent staff viewpoints but also some common ground, enabling important conclusions to be drawn, backed up by data.

When asked what attracts them to a company, pay was the number one priority for both IT contractors and permanent staff. Yet this was very closely followed by a desire for interesting work in both groups. 23 percent of IT contractors put interesting work as a close second, and 20 percent of permanent staff agreed.

The cerebral nature of IT work means that members of the IT Department need to be kept busy and engaged on projects. Too much downtime leads to boredom. This is underlined by numbers showing that 57 percent of non-IT staff have been in their current job for more than 5 years, compared to just 29 percent of IT workers.

So, while the salary and day rate may be the first thing a candidate looks at in your recruitment advertisement or job description, it’s equally important to make the job sound interesting and something that will look good on their CV. Invest time in crafting recruitment adverts that excite IT candidates, and maybe get your existing IT staff to critique the first draft.

For both permanent and contract staff the first port of call when seeking work is a recruitment agency, followed by job boards for contractors and company websites for permanent staff. What is revealing is that on average 30 percent of candidates have never applied to a job advertised on social media. While platforms such as LinkedIn may be valuable for hiring managers researching CVs, it would appear it’s not the first place candidates go to when hunting for new work.

So, what would push an IT worker to start job hunting? In both groups, poor management came out on top. 30 percent of IT contractors would leave due to poor management, compared with 19 percent of IT permanent workers. Without jumping to conclusions on the subtext of these responses, humans cannot help but draw on past experiences to answer questions like this.

Does this indicate that 30 percent of IT contractors have felt the effects of poor management in the past? Potentially. Clearly, it’s important for all staff to be onboarded at new companies effectively, before being supported and assessed fairly. It’s equally important that managers are trained to motivate their team and identify concerns in order to reduce staff churn.

When candidates were asked about their greatest challenge over the next 12 months there was a difference of opinion. Permanent staff stated increasing their salary and a better work life balance were the top of their list.

For IT contractors, concerns over IR35 and work life balance were the big challenges. The extension of IR35 reforms into the private sector is due to take place in April 2020 and is already starting to cause confusion and chaos. Essentially, if any contracting work is classified as ‘inside’ the IR35, earnings will be taxed as if the contractor is a permanent employee.

So, do hiring managers have to make any changes in the present to accommodate for a mass exodus of contractors? Apparently not. IT contractors were also asked if IR35 will change their mind about doing contract work and only eight percent stated that it would.  This underlines that IT experts choose contracting for a better lifestyle, not just for tax advantages. Working when and where they want, on projects they select, at negotiated rates, gives them the freedom and choice they value.