The Positives and Negatives of Locum Work v Permanent Roles

The Positives and Negatives of Locum Work v Permanent Roles – article by Interim Lawyers and Ten Percent Legal Recruitment. Which side is the grass greener on?

We get candidates calling us all the time to discuss moving from permanent to locum work. They have been speaking to a locum in their current law firm who has been doing a week’s cover and the locum has told them that they get paid huge amounts of money, they don’t have to do much work, its simply babysitting a caseload for an absent colleague and at the end of the week, they put their invoice in and get paid a good amount of money that seems a lot higher than the candidate gets as a salary. The candidate then starts to think about their future and why they couldn’t suddenly become a locum and earn lots of money as well!

Employers – NDA

Firstly, if you are an employer of reading this, you may want to think about getting locums to sign an NDA with you so that they are unable to reveal their hourly rate to any employees. Whilst this is an extremely rare occurrence (and I don’t think any of our locums would be unprofessional enough to do it), it obviously happens because we get the phone calls from salaried staff who tell us about it!

Locum Reality

The assumption from candidates that the world of locuming is nice and cosy, and there’s all this work being offered to them, they get paid huge amounts of money and get plenty of time off. Whilst it is true that some locums are able to fill their year with assignments and get paid a good amount of money to do so, it is also not the case that this is a easy path to take for most.

Competition

To start with because it takes quite a bit of time to build up a reputation and get lots of repeat bookings. Without repeat bookings, you are constantly chasing assignments; chasing assignments involves competing with lots of other locums, everyone has their price and someone will inevitably have a lower price than you.

Consistency

Furthermore, if you have a mortgage to pay or ongoing commitments, then locuming is something you need to think long and hard about because there will be times in the year when you get no work. and if you get no work, you’ll have no income.

Permanent Jobs Ruled Out

It is not that long ago that during the recession, locums started to look around for permanent work and when doing so discovered that employers don’t like recruiting locums to cover permanent vacancies because they know exactly what’s going to happen when the market picks up again (the locums are going to return to locuming). We had a lot of locums register with us back in 2008-2012 who simply couldn’t find work because no one was prepared to employ them.

So in times of plenty, doing locum work is great. There will be assignments everywhere, and if you’re able to travel and take the assignments, you’ll get plenty of work and all will be good in the world.

However, if the market drops for whatever reason, then there are good chances that your work will drop and you’ll suddenly find yourself unemployable. There are lots of horror stories that were not reported in the media during the recession last time round where solicitors who had been doing locum work had to take jobs working night shifts in Tesco, and other such similar roles. because there was just no work for them anywhere else.

Summary

So when candidates call us with this question about whether being a locum is more rosy and beneficial than being a permanent member of staff, we always talk about the stability that permanent work offers and the guaranteed consistency of salary. The fact is that locums do not have everything as easy as it might seem in that one week of work in a particular practice. There are benefits to being a locum, such as flexibility, choosing when to work, choosing when to walk away from a firm if you don’t like them and working on a self-employed basis. Similarly there are disadvantages such as the lack of consistency of work, the frequency of work at certain times of the year, the travel required if office-based and the pressure that locums are under to a certain extent when stepping into a role they don’t know anything about and dealing with office politics. It works for some people, it doesn’t work for others and permanent can be so much better in terms of career progression and future stability.

If you would like a confidential (and impartial!) conversation about switching to permanent work or to locum work, please get in touch and we would be happy to help.