Recently, I had a discussion with a CEO in an engineering firm about how to re-staff his company after he downsized in response to the oil and gas crisis. He is in the seals and gasket industry but plummeting oil prices have crushed him, forcing him to reinvent his business. The challenge was how to employ the new engineering talent he needed without adding unnecessary expenses, at least until his business started to generate cash flow again — not an uncommon challenge today.
It was a similar challenge for a company trying to replace its marketing team without incurring fixed costs. Or a company in the accounting industry that reinvented his staff into interim chief financial officers and offered them to companies that needed their skills but not their full-time costs.
Freelancing, outsourcing and finding other ways to thrive in changing times is no small challenge for companies that have not had to rely on these types of solutions in the past. But now is a good time for them to learn new skills. Freelancing is not going away. In fact it has become a dominant model for many companies. But the perceived complexity is perhaps more simple to solve that it might appear.
