Why Life Science Companies Should Hire Contract Employees
In 2022, more companies were turning to contractors rather than permanent hires for surge capacity.
A 2022 labor-market survey reported that around 50% of U.S. companies planned to add headcount in the second half of 2022, and 45% planned to bring in additional contract staff. Companies use contractors to grow without committing to permanent cost, and to reach expertise they would struggle to hire directly.
During the 2020 pandemic many companies over hired against what turned out to be a temporary spike in demand. By 2022 those same companies were running mass layoffs as demand settled back to normal. That damages a reputation, and it is an expensive way to adjust headcount. Training, full benefits, unemployment costs across everyone let go, the price of rehiring later, and the people who leave because morale has dropped all add up.
In life sciences, hiring needs can spike because of remediation work, a consent decree, or a Warning Letter from the FDA. Those needs are often temporary and end when the project does. The question is how to staff a temporary demand without carrying it permanently.
Contractors cover temporary projects and short term demand. They can take on time sensitive work your existing staff has no capacity for, and they can hold a function while you work out what permanent headcount should actually be.
When the project finishes or the demand changes, the contracts simply end. There is no mass layoff. If the need continues you extend the contract, or convert the contractor to a permanent hire. That preserves your reputation and avoids most of the cost. Contractors arrive with the expertise already in place, their benefits can sit with the agency that placed them, and they do not qualify for unemployment.
The financial advantages go beyond flexibility on headcount. A genuine contractor arrives with the expertise, which removes most of the training period along with the time and money that go into it. Training and onboarding alone average $1,286 per employee.
Full time employees usually receive a full benefits package, which is a substantial cost. A contractor may have none, a limited package, or benefits provided through the agency that placed them.
Industry cost surveys from that period put health insurance alone at roughly $5,000-$30,000 per employee per year.
When an assignment ends, a contractor does not qualify for unemployment benefits. A permanent employee in the same position often does, and that becomes a further cost at the point of exit.
The average cost of paying out an unemployment claim was about $4,200 and could run past $12,000.
Using a talent agency to hire contractors saves more again. Finding, hiring, and managing contract staff is a full time job in itself. An agency runs that process and carries the ongoing administration, from coaching through to benefits and logged hours.
Broader Access to Industry Experts
The job market has shifted toward candidates. Attracting the right people and closing them before they accept another offer has become harder across every industry, not just this one.
Contract candidates in particular line up their next role well before the current one ends. An agency like Viltis already holds relationships with those people, so when they start looking they check in with their recruiter first. That is where most of the time saving actually comes from.
Plenty of experts sit in permanent roles, but they are slow to attract, expensive, and often come with constraints attached. Contractors and consultants cover both niche and broad skill sets, and more of them are genuinely available at any given moment.
Say you need someone with class III medical device experience. A permanent candidate's range is limited by how long they stayed at each employer. Contractors move between roles and companies, so exposure to class III is far more likely, and the pool of people who both match and are actually free is much deeper.
If you need to hire contractors, that is the kind of search Viltis runs.
Viltis places consultants across clinical operations, regulatory affairs, quality assurance, remediation, and scientific and engineering disciplines.
Candidate quality matters here. A wrong hire in life sciences is expensive in ways that are hard to unwind, and compliance is not something you can partly hit and call done.
Viltis works with life science startups and with large multinationals. Knowing how both are structured is what lets us adapt the hiring approach to the client in front of us, rather than running the same process every time.
If you want to talk about contract hiring for a life sciences program, contact us.