According to a study by Connecting Visions, the consulting firm owned by Banco Santander, the Spanish companies that are growing the most (with rates above 15% per year) are those that have already adopted in their structures some of the new forms of work, like the one represented by freelancers.
This trait is fulfilled in 61% of the Spanish companies with the highest growth, among the 300 companies analyzed by the consultancy from various sectors, which have templates between 50 and 250 employees.
In the same study, entitled “Outsourcing needs of Spanish companies”, It is noted that of the remaining 40%, practically all (97%) declare that they are prepared and intend to work with these professionals to cover their talent needs quickly and on time.
The report also reveals that, regardless of growth and the sector, 41% of companies in Spain already work with these independent professionals and, in the future, almost 7 out of 10 companies (67%) will need the occasional reinforcement of senior profiles.
Investments aimed at attracting talent
When analyzing the main areas in which companies invest, hiring external talent through freelancer platforms and portals is precisely one of the most outstanding, with an average investment of 50,500 euros in 2021. This area is only surpassed by the investment in technology licenses (64,000 euros on average) and in Digitization and IT (59,500 euros). These are items shared by all the companies participating in the study, regardless of their size or growth rate.
The budget that companies have allocated to freelancers and consultants, as well as to attracting talent through headhunters, represents 54% of all the investment made in 2021, and is expected to continue in the short term. In fact, 27% of companies plan to allocate most of their budget in the coming months to technology licenses, another 27% to headhunters and 18% to freelancers.
Where Spanish companies look for talent
The same study shows that, when it comes to focusing their projects, high-growth companies turn, first of all, to independent professionals recruited through LinkedIn or other social networks (30%)and secondly to external consultants (20%) and friends or reference contacts (20%).
Likewise, all the companies surveyed believe that, in the future, the suppliers they will have to count on to strengthen competitiveness of their businesses will be business, technology and digitization consultants (48.8% of the sample expresses this), along with technology license providers (43.1%) and specific expert advisors (32.3%). These forecasts coincide with the items to which the companies with the highest growth have allocated the largest budget last year.
