Why senior professionals deserve a better alternative than just any payroll company

As a senior professional with 10+ years of experience and a day rate of €750 or more, you are probably used to arranging your own assignments. You have built a network and earned a reputation, and you know what you are worth.

Lately something has been changing, and it has nothing to do with the quality of your work or the demand for your expertise.

It is about how clients want to work with you.

The conversation you hear more and more

“We would love to work with you, but not directly as a ZZP’er (self-employed contractor). You have to go through a payroll company or a secondment agency.”

It comes from compliance departments that get nervous about TTA, DBA and VBAR, and from legal departments that want to cover risks under internal policies that are being interpreted more strictly.

Suddenly you face a choice you did not really want to make.

The false trilemma

The discussion about working independently increasingly ends up with three options:

Option 1: Back to employment
For many professionals that is not a real option. You did not become self-employed for nothing. The autonomy, the choice of who you work with and the freedom to organise your work yourself are not things you give up lightly.

Option 2: Keep working through whichever payroll companies come along
This is what many professionals do now. Every assignment has a different intermediary, with unclear cost structures and margins you cannot see. You do not know what price you are paying for what you get, and each time you have to explain all over again who you are and how you work.

Option 3: Keep fighting as a classic ZZP’er
You put more and more energy into convincing clients, have longer discussions about contract types and bring in more legal advice. Meanwhile opportunities pass you by because organisations find it too risky.

None of these options feels like a step forward.

What if the intermediary adds value?

This nuance is often missing from the debate: if you have to work through an intermediary anyway, why not one that is transparent and actually gives something back?

That is why we founded Inductus.

We experienced the problem ourselves. We were forced to work through intermediaries without knowing what it cost us or what we got in return.

We have been working this way ourselves for more than five years, and it works, even if it is not perfect, because it is transparent and fair.

What Inductus is (and what it is not)

Inductus is a platform for senior professionals in knowledge-intensive sectors: government, financial services, IT, interim management, architecture and advisory.

What we do:

  • Transparent cost structure: you know what you pay and what for
  • A stable base: not a different party for every assignment
  • A network of peers: knowledge sharing with professionals at a similar level
  • Legal and administrative support: compliance, payroll, contract management

What we do not do:

  • Account management: we do not go looking for assignments on your behalf
  • Brokering: we are not a recruitment agency
  • Volume: we grow deliberately and selectively

You stay responsible for your own assignments and your own business, but you get a home base that understands how you work and what you need.

The network as a by-product

We are a small collective with ambitions to grow. Not a mass organisation with thousands of professionals, but a select group that knows and trusts each other.

That is exactly what makes the network valuable.

Even as a senior professional with a strong network of your own, you can have gaps between assignments. Then you do not want to depend on recruiters who do not understand you, and you do not want to be seen looking on LinkedIn.

The Inductus network gives you discreet access to peers who work in similar environments, know similar challenges and can help each other without commercial agendas.

It is not the main reason to join, but it is a valuable by-product.

Who this works for (and who it does not)

Inductus is not a solution for everyone.

This model works for you if:

  • You have at least 10 years of professional experience
  • Your day rate is €750 or higher
  • You have a BV (private limited company) or are willing to set one up
  • You work in knowledge-intensive sectors
  • You can and want to arrange your own assignments
  • You are forced to work through an intermediary

This model does not work for you if:

  • You need help finding assignments
  • You charge a lower rate (the overhead is then not worth it)
  • You deliberately choose to run a sole proprietorship without a BV
  • You are looking for a recruiter or broker

We are selective because the model only works if everyone operates at a similar level and can stand on their own two feet.

Why a BV?

The question comes up regularly: why is a BV a requirement?

Legally: Our model works through secondment under an employment contract, where reverse invoicing returns the margin to your own company. That is only possible with a BV.

Tax-wise: At the turnover levels that come with this rate, a BV is often more attractive for tax purposes, thanks to lower corporate income tax and better options for building up capital. Whether that applies in your situation depends on your personal circumstances. It is best to discuss that with a tax adviser.

If you do not have a BV yet but meet the other criteria, we can go through the process together. We do expect you to be willing to take this step.

The difference between transparency and ‘cheap’

A misunderstanding we run into regularly is that a transparent cost structure would mean we are cheaper than other parties.

That is not necessarily true.

What we do guarantee:

  • You know what you pay
  • You know what you get for it
  • There are no hidden margins or unclear constructions
  • You keep maximum control over your own revenue

Whether that works out cheaper for you than a traditional payroll company depends on what transparency, network and stability are worth to you.

What it is like to work with Inductus

In practical terms:

  • You get an employment contract with Inductus
  • Your revenue is offset against salary costs and an administrative contribution
  • The remaining amount goes to your BV as a management fee
  • Your client has a contract with Inductus, not with you personally
  • Legally you are an employee, in practice you keep your autonomy

In the collaboration:

  • You stay responsible for finding and negotiating your own assignments
  • You agree contract terms directly with the client
  • We take care of the legal and administrative translation
  • You have access to a network of like-minded professionals
  • If you have questions or something is unclear, you have a direct line to people who do the work themselves

The credibility of experience

What sets Inductus apart from many other initiatives: we are not an outside company selling a service. We are the first users of the model ourselves.

Five years ago we faced the same questions you may have now. We started building this model because we needed it ourselves, and we still use it every day.

That means:

  • We understand the practice of secondment at large organisations
  • We know the challenges of compliance and legal discussions
  • We know what senior professionals need (and what they do not)
  • If something does not work, we are the first to feel it

We did not devise this model from behind a desk. It is a way of working we apply ourselves and are now scaling up for others.

A small, selective group

We have no ambition to become the biggest, but we do want to be the best for a specific group of professionals.

That is why we grow through targeted conversations with people who recognise the problem and appreciate the solution, and not through mass marketing or aggressive sales.

We want to grow to a group of about 20-30 professionals and no further. That is big enough for a valuable network and small enough to stay personal and agile.

The question to ask yourself

If you are reading this, you probably recognise the situation. You are a senior professional, you are forced to work through intermediaries and you wonder whether there is a better way.

Whether you want to stay autonomous is not even a question. Of course you do.

The question is this: if you have to go through an intermediary anyway, do you want transparency and a collective, or do you keep working through opaque, changing payroll companies?

Inductus is not for everyone, but for professionals who deliberately choose transparency, stability and a network of peers it can be a logical step.

What we chose ourselves

The labour market for self-employed professionals is changing, not because they have become less good but because the legal context is getting more complex.

You can fight it, or give in and strike a compromise with parties you do not trust. You can also choose a model that fits how you want to work.

We made that choice five years ago and are still happy with it.

Jan-Willem Rodenhuis is Managing Partner at Ductus B.V. and co-initiator of Inductus, a collective for senior professionals in knowledge-intensive sectors.