Shawnee Love   •   January 31, 2019

There are plenty of good reasons to hire contractors (and a few bad).

Bad reasons include hiring because you want to avoid payroll taxes or hand off responsibility.

Some of the best reasons to hire a contractor include:

• Filling a skill gap,
• Fast tracking a project or initiative,
• Assisting with a peak in workload or unique project,
• Outsourcing routine, administrative and/or non-strategic activities,
• Gaining access to clients or markets you wouldn’t otherwise approach,
• Implementing a strategic initiative (aka change) while still running your business,
• Keeping operations moving during a crisis which is otherwise occupying your employees, and
• Training an employee and thereby acquiring new knowledge.

However, even if you are hiring a contractor for all the right reasons, I don’t recommend giving them access to your secret sauce.  There are circumstances where they may need to know but even in that case, proceed carefully.

• Do thorough background checks to validate trustworthiness and confidential practices,
• Establish standards for handling confidential information such as not permitting remote access or removal of information, and
• Paper the arrangement with a rock solid agreement that protects your intellectual property and confidential information.

We work with excellent lawyers and would be happy to recommend one to assist with that process.

We’ve listed our top 8 reasons for when hiring a contractor (or contracting out) can be a great strategy to get work done. If you need help with taking these steps, we’d be happy to help.