CAREER & DEVELOPMENT ADVERTORIAL
BODY LEASING: WHAT IS IT, FOR WHOM, AND WHY? It’s quite possible that you have come across the concept of body leasing, but never in practice – you’ve just heard of it. Perhaps you didn’t need it. But this may change any time as body leasing, or outsourcing of specialists, is becoming more and more popular. What is it exactly about? For whom? Why is it a good idea? All of this is discussed in the article below. Let’s go! BODY LEASING: WHAT IS IT? As I have already mentioned, it is also referred to as outsourcing of specialists. Other names are used, too: employee leasing or making employees available to a company for a specific time, as per the contract. Thanks to this arrangement, you can get valuable support literally overnight, which really counts in the case of projects with a very tight deadline. Depending on the needs, this form of cooperation may last just a few days or even several months. Importantly – and this is true for the entire philosophy of outsourcing – when using body leasing, you make savings both in the economic and the organizational dimension. You acquire an experienced and reliable employee in the given field and you don’t hire him or her, which means you don’t have to carry out the whole painstaking and expensive recruitment process. Which, as it sometimes happens, is not guaranteed to provide you with a candidate that is perfect for the job. This solution is particularly popular in the IT sector, which is where j-labs operates.
instead of one person, you lease a whole team. You can build it to fit the client’s needs or use a ready one, composed of specialists from various areas. It’s best when team members are well- -coordinated and have worked together before. However, as different projects have different requirements, it’s difficult to outsource the same team in each case. In some situations, you need more software developers, in other cases, you will mostly need testers, and sometimes, a cross-functional team is what works best. There are lots of different scenarios, so there is no point in listing all of the possible variants; what’s important is that everything depends on what the project is like.
BODY LEASING: FOR WHOM? WHEN IS IT USEFUL? WHAT IS IT LIKE?
• Richness in synergy, or everyone wins The benefits of body leasing can be illustrated with a number of examples. This is especially important in the case of software houses, i.e. companies that primarily engage in producing software. The fluctuations occurring in such organi An extended service is also available: zations as to the number of projects team leasing. As the name suggests, may be handled by means of body
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leasing, the assumption being that some of the headcount (0–10%) are employed through outsourcing. This allows for flexibility in terms of the number of employees hired by the company. It’s also beneficial for the employees since, when working through an agent like that, they have access to various projects and organizational cultures. In a body leasing company, everyone can choose from among the available clients and projects. This produces a synergy and cooperation effect: the software house buffers the number of employees through its suppliers and the suppliers are able to ensure stability for their employees. One example is j-labs, which provides specialists of various expertise and works with a large number of clients (currently, 40+), which guarantees active participation in many interesting projects. Sometimes, there are fears that becoming a part of this 10% of the headcount that is permanently assigned to software houses may end in no employment. There is no such risk. Quite the contrary: the agent (in this case, the employer) guarantees job stability specifically because of the fact that he works with several dozens of employees at the same time.
Outsourcing&More | September–October 2020
