ONSIDE / PROFILE
CONTRACTOR NATION:
THE GORILLA IN THE MIDST
One of the biggest
societal changes of
the last five years has
been the growth in
contracting, freelancing
and self-employment.
Seneca have responded
to this opportunity
with the launch of
contractor accounting
business, Gorilla.
Michael Taylor reports
O
ne of the underlying trends behind this explosion
in the volume of small companies and sole-traders
is how large organisations are seeking a dynamic
critical mass, a lower cost-base and that ability to expand
and contract around the delivery of projects.
The reasons for this are many. From the employers
perspective (at least for some employers), employees are
increasingly seen as a risk as much as an asset. Witness
the growing number of zero hours contracts, allowing
companies to add and drop resource as required.
Having labour market flexibility has always been a key
part of that – but developing a complex supply chain of
knowledge workers and sub-contractors is growing in
popularity – also contractors prefer the looser arrangement,
as long as they get paid.
But more specifically, in some industries, there has been a
shift driven by the supplier of the highly skilled service which
has eroded the very notion of what we would traditionally
think of as a ‘job’. A long term mutual commitment
between company and employee that incorporates wages,
rights and perhaps some additional benefits like a pension
or healthcare.
But how have professional service providers got their heads
around this? It represents a challenge and is disrupting
established ways of delivering services like accounting,
book keeping, legal services and compliance.
28
In the North of England, two of the boom industries of
the new and emerging economy are digital industries
and creative businesses, represented at thriving clusters