Understanding the Importance of Legal Awareness in IT Staffing

When using platforms like Bench Direct to hire IT contractors, understand the importance of knowing about their personal legal standing. You may have heard of the term “benching” used in IT staffing and management. This refers to the risk of contractors becoming inaccessible during a period of project coordination due to personal matters that end up occupying most of their time, leaving little room for professional obligations. Understanding the law can enable you to not only anticipate this issue, but get ahead of it by predicting when a contractor might require personal leave of absence.

No matter what the industry, the fact that IT staffing professionals have such a high rate of turnover does not only have to do with the industry itself, it has to do with the individual who is being managed and his or her personal life issues. It could be the separation from spouses that leads to expensive alimony and child support arrangements, meaning money becomes very tight and credit scores drop. If this happens, an IT contractor may not be able to afford the car payments or simple gas and insurance to get to work every day, leading to missed days. Additionally, hiring contractors who are already facing personal legal challenges may lead to further problems down the line as they cannot fully separate who they are from their positions as contractors. It is also a lot more difficult to find a new contractor when there are many candidates available in the marketplace. At Bench Direct, the advantage of using our platform is having a pool of qualified contractors available, which gives you the leverage to be picky. When there are fewer candidates available however, we need to take the opportunity to determine what actions the contractor will take with the company, and whether they will be reliable in the long term. Understanding the legal aspects of Virginia separation laws and dating can help you do this, especially when the contractor doesn’t know as much about the law. The same goes for any other state’s laws.

For example, if your candidate appears to have a lot of medical bills to pay, this could mean that he or she is nearing bankruptcy. This leads to a few questions. First, you’ll need to look at the law to see how much a contractor can earn on a steady and consistent basis. You also have to keep in mind the average salary of IT contractors in your area, and consider how this figure would conflict with the business savvy of the contractor, regardless of whether it comes with personal issues or not. If you find that a benching situation may occur, you can take the opportunity to hire another contractor to take over temporarily until the original contractor returns. Also note whether a contractor has been fired from their previous positions due to a poor legal standing, or if their companies have closed for bankruptcy. If you see red flags like these, you would need to determine how to better staff the position, or whether the position should even continue to exist. The more information you know about your contractors, the better you can hire people who are going to be available. This is especially important with fast-paced industries like IT.