The consulting industry is booming in the United States with the number of consultants growing to 734,000 in 2020. More of the workforce has been looking for an alternative to the traditional 9-5 career. Over the past few years, a flexible career has become the route of choice and many are turning to these consulting opportunities instead. It’s not a surprise that so many people are choosing freelance roles when you consider that business consultants make an average annual salary of $87,660, or $42.14 per hour.
Hiring consultants for your business can be a great way to tap into a wide range of skills and hire experts when and where they are needed most. By hiring a consultant to oversee a large project, your business can scale even faster and utilize an outside perspective without bringing someone on your payroll full time. Consultants come to the table with a wide range of experience at various companies. These professionals can help to analyze your business and create solutions while helping you meet important goals.
There are many different types of consulting roles that could benefit different departments within your organization including: management consultants, operations consultants, financial consultants, human resources consultants, communication, public relations, and image consultants.
Many industries have experienced a growing demand for consultants over the past few years:
Once you’ve decided to hire consultants, the next crucial steps are developing a contract, onboarding them, and making sure payments are issued correctly. Consultants can be paid hourly, by project, or even a daily rate. According to a study by Consulting Success the breakdown for fee arrangements is:
The truth is, most companies don’t have the payment infrastructure in place to pay flexible workers in an efficient way. They are used to paying full-time, salaried employees who have a structured pay schedule and amount. Consultants can be an entirely different story. As we’ve seen from the numbers above, consultant payments can happen in a variety of way and on a variety of timelines.
High volumes of invoices can take more administrative work to process than your full-time employees. And even with all that work, there is a high potential for error. To avoid all of this, you should use a flexible management platform with integrated payment services. Having one system of record for your onboarding, project management, and payments means you’ll have full visibility into your flexible workforce while staying in compliance and making sure all consultants are paid correctly and on time.
Planning to hire contractors this year? AllWork can help you onboard and pay your flexible workforce. We offer fast, easy, and compliant payment options. Get in touch at info@allworknow.com to learn more and see a demo of our platform here.
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