If you want to expand your team because you need more hands (and heads) on the job you have many options. In addition to standard recruitment, which can make many organizations challenging, there is body leasing. What does it consist of? How does staffing differ from recruitment and outsourcing? We hasten to answer!
What are staffing or body leasing services?
Body leasing, or staffing, is a strategic solution where an organization temporarily hires skilled professionals through an external provider. Unlike outsourcing, where entire projects or departments are delegated to a third party, staffing focuses on supplementing a company’s existing workforce with external talent for specific tasks, time frames, or projects.
Staffing, or body leasing, allows businesses to tap into a pool of highly qualified candidates without the long-term commitment associated with traditional employment contracts. This flexibility is particularly beneficial for projects with defined deadlines, where there is a need for specialized skills that the in-house team may lack, or when a company is experiencing a temporary spike in workload.
Benefits of Body Leasing Over In-House Hiring:
What benefits can body leasing bring to your business?
- Cost Efficiency: Recruiting permanent employees can be time-consuming and expensive, especially when considering costs like training, onboarding, benefits, and severance in the case of underperformance. Body leasing allows companies to cut down on these overheads.
- Faster Hiring Process: The speed of finding temporary talent is faster than traditional recruitment. The staffing provider takes on the responsibility of sourcing, vetting, and ensuring that the professionals are ready to work immediately.
- Flexibility: Projects often require quick adjustments. Body leasing offers the flexibility to scale teams up or down, depending on the needs of the moment. This is especially useful during peak seasons, product launches, or unforeseen workload surges.
- Access to Niche Skills: For businesses requiring highly specific skills for short-term projects, hiring full-time employees is impractical. Body leasing provides quick access to experts with the required expertise without the commitment of a full-time hire.
Staffing vs Recruitment – What’s the Difference?
While both staffing (or body leasing) and recruitment involve acquiring talent for an organization, the processes and goals differ significantly.
| Staffing | Recruitment | |
| Engagement | In staffing, companies hire temporary professionals, often on a project or contract basis. The relationship is typically short-term, ranging from a few months to a couple of years. | Recruitment focuses on finding permanent employees to fill long-term positions within an organization. The goal is to secure a lasting fit that grows with the company over time. |
| Ownership | The staffing agency maintains formal employment responsibility over the leased workers. The agency handles payroll, benefits, and other employment logistics, allowing the company to focus solely on managing the day-to-day operations. | Once a candidate is hired, they become a permanent member of the company, and the business is responsible for their development, benefits, and long-term engagement. |
| Flexibility | Because staffing focuses on short-term or project-based hires, the process is faster, and the flexibility to onboard and offboard talent quickly is a core advantage. | Because staffing focuses on short-term or project-based hires, the process is faster, and the flexibility to onboard and offboard talent quickly is a core advantage. |
| Costs | Although the hourly or daily rates of contract workers may be higher than for full-time employees, there are no long-term commitments, and companies save on benefits and termination costs. | While the initial costs of recruitment might be higher (especially when using agencies), hiring permanent employees often becomes more cost-effective over time due to lower hourly rates and investments in long-term potential. |
Staffing vs Recruitment – What’s the difference?
Staffing vs Outsourcing – What’s the Difference?
While staffing and outsourcing are both ways of leveraging external talent, they serve different purposes and involve different levels of control over projects and tasks.
| Staffing | Outsourcing | |
| Scope | With staffing, companies hire individuals or teams to temporarily join their internal operations, working side by side with the in-house team. The company maintains control over the tasks and outcomes, directing the work of the leased staff. | In outsourcing, entire functions or projects are handed over to an external provider. The provider takes full responsibility for completing the task, often with minimal oversight from the contracting company. This can apply to IT services, customer support, payroll processing, and more. |
| Control | The company retains control over how the work is executed and integrates the temporary employees into its workflows. The leased staff acts as an extension of the company’s workforce. | When outsourcing, the external provider controls the process and execution, leaving the business with less direct oversight over day-to-day operations. |
| Flexibility and Expertise | Staffing offers flexibility and the ability to bring in niche experts to support in-house teams, especially for short-term or project-based needs. Companies can decide when to scale up or down, but they are still responsible for managing the workflow. | Outsourcing is ideal when a company lacks the internal expertise or infrastructure to manage certain tasks. Instead of hiring or leasing talent to manage internally, they entrust the entire process to an external expert provider. |
| Costs | The cost of staffing is largely dependent on the contracted rate of the individual professionals. The company still bears the indirect costs of management and integration into current projects. | Outsourcing often comes with a fixed cost for the entire service. Although it might seem more expensive upfront, outsourcing eliminates the need for infrastructure, management oversight, and operational support, which can reduce long-term costs. |
Staffing vs Recruitment – What’s the difference?
Ultimately, organisations choose staffing when they need temporary talent to integrate into their existing team and retain control over how work is managed. Outsourcing, on the other hand, is preferred when an organisation wants to offload entire tasks or operations to an external provider.
When take the strategic decision to use Staffing?
Many organisations opt for staffing as a strategic move when they face specific challenges or changes in their business environment. Some of the common reasons include:
- Handling Peaks in Demand: Industries like retail, logistics, and IT frequently experience seasonal or project-based fluctuations. During peak periods, businesses may not have enough internal resources to manage the increased workload. Staffing offers the flexibility to temporarily scale up resources without the need to make permanent hires.
- Access to Specialised Skills: Often, organizations need specialized skills for short-term projects or to solve specific problems. Staffing agencies can provide access to professionals with niche expertise that might not be required full-time but are crucial for a particular phase of a project.
- Cost Control: Staffing helps businesses manage labor costs by avoiding long-term employment commitments. By using temporary staff, companies reduce the risk of overstaffing during downturns or paying for benefits and perks associated with full-time employees.
- Speed and Agility: In fast-moving industries or startup environments, there may not be time for long recruitment processes. Staffing allows companies to quickly onboard professionals who can start contributing to a project right away, ensuring that deadlines are met and goals achieved.
- Mitigating Risk: Staffing can act as a “try-before-you-buy” scenario. Organizations can evaluate talent on the job, ensuring a strong cultural and technical fit before deciding to make a permanent offer.
- Project-Based Work: Some industries, especially IT, engineering, and consulting, rely heavily on project-based work. Once a project is completed, the need for extra personnel dissipates. In these cases, staffing offers the best solution to bring in temporary workers who exit when the project ends.
In summary, businesses turn to staffing when they require flexibility, speed, specialized skills, or temporary workforce expansion. It offers a solution that balances the need for external talent with control over project outcomes, without the long-term costs associated with traditional hiring.
