Hiring vs Contracting IT in the 2020s
Dedicated employees on the payroll are not going away anytime soon. Many roles require full-time personnel in your non-profit organization, particularly mission-facing jobs. However, the nature of the market and the development of technology means that having a dedicated employee on staff can often be more expensive in terms of time and money than it might be worth.
There are two ways for non-profits to access talent. First, they can simply hire an employee who has the required abilities. Second, they can bring in a contractor.
Practically speaking, many small to medium-sized non-profits don’t even have a full-time information technology professional. Often, another employee with separate duties who happens to be tech-savvy ends up taking on IT responsibilities. This is a short-term fix that has a tendency to become permanent. That employee’s original duties suffer, and IT work often becomes disorganized and haphazard.
Another conundrum is that there may not be enough IT work to justify a full-time position, but finding someone qualified and willing to accept a part-time job can be challenging. To hire staff with the proper experience, a non-profit will often find itself paying a full-time salary for a part-time position. There are time costs as well. It takes managers weeks or even months to post job listings, sort through resumes, and interview candidates, while the organization needs results now.
New employees also place heavy burdens on HR. Onboarding, benefits, and regulatory compliance are onerous tasks, and it becomes exponentially more challenging with each new employee. The result is often an organization with unnecessary bloat, underworked and overpaid staff, and slow reaction speed.