Why Hire an Independent Contractor?___________________________________________________

Reduced Overhead:  The attraction of hiring an independent contractor is the reduced costs in expenses, payroll, benefits, and other overhead. Less overhead also means lower financial stress on a business. If there's no work, you aren't paying. Hiring firms can afford to pay independent contractors more because they don't have to pay Social Security taxes or unemployment compensation taxes, provide workers' compensation coverage, or provide employee benefits like health insurance and sick leave as well as reducing the cost of maintaining these records. Commonly, the fully loaded cost of an employee is at least twice his or her salary. This is why consultants charge so much more than regular employees: their billable hours have to cover the many overhead costs that are implicit for your full-time employees.

No Health Benefits:  An enormous burden on businesses today is the uncontrollable costs of employee health benefits. As costs of health insurance and parental leave increase, so do the extraneous costs of hiring employees. According to the Mercer 2003 National Survey of Employer Sponsored Health Plans, the cost of health care per employee in 2003 was over $6200 per year.

Work On Demand/Flexibility:  Hiring an independent contractor offers flexibility to the changing work demands of your company. As you grow, you may find that you have wide swings of ups and downs of available work and if sales go down, you can easily adjust the number of contractors without suffering the costs associated with layoffs, like unemployment. You have the ability to take added opportunities as they arise, and during slow periods, have greater cost control. Current economic conditions make this even more important for a business.

Less Responsibility:  The burden of any business is providing payroll for your staff and help them provide for their families. This is eliminated by using independent contractors as they are used on a need only basis. Independents will also require less management due to more motivation from being self-employed and generally means that you are hiring fully trained people who are specialized in their field.

Improving Efficiency:   Fundamental to any position in a company is the learning and training of the job position. Months and months of training are required just to bring staff up to speed. By using an independent contractor, you have the resources of a trained and knowledgeable person handling tasks on a need only basis thereby eliminating the training costs of a full time employee and improving the amount of time needed to complete tasks.