The internet allows us to collaborate easily and work online with others, opening huge opportunities for businesses and allowed people to freelance as opposed to working in an office environment. Whether you’re a business and need a marketing freelancer or virtual assistant, you can pay people to do nearly any business task through the many freelance sites gracing us.
If you’re thinking of hiring a freelancer, or wish to begin freelancing, here are a few pros and cons to help you decide.
Negatives
When you are not working next to somebody, it is harder to build up an understanding of your requirements. You will have to spend some time either through Skype calls or by developing processes so that they can build an understanding of your company and exactly what you need from them.
You may also have a freelancer who you are unable to contact for large periods of time. This can be frustrating if you are trying to complete tasks quickly and you can’t reach them.
Also, instructions are at risk of being lost in translation and being misunderstood. This can waste time and money if what you asked for is not what you end up with. Explaining tasks and expectations is easier to explain face-to-face.
Positives
You can save a lot of money by employing people on an hourly/task basis. You don’t have to pay an annual salary, holidays, sick pay or pension and tax contributions. Also, because they are working on a task delivery basis, they may be more motivated because their income is regulated on the tasks completed. Therefore, their performance may be more productive than people who do not have to work any harder to get paid more.
Additionally, you can also tap into a range of different skillsets. Say you had a full-time marketing assistant working for you and their main background was in social media management, therefore, when it comes to creating videos, website development and content creation, they might not be highly talented in these areas. When you work with freelancers, you can select the most suitable option for each task, as you are only paying for that one task rather than an annual salary. The quality of the output should, therefore, be much higher.
Another bonus is that you are only paying for skills when you need them, therefore, if you wanted someone to install data recovery software windows onto your PCs, you wouldn’t pay for a full-time IT person, but hire a data recovery specialist who is an expert in that field. The same concept goes for any other tasks that you need completing. If you only need something doing for a few months of the year, or one day a week, why would you pay someone a full-time annual salary?
Using freelancers can have lots of benefits and finding the right ones could transform the way that you handle your business. Many successful small businesses can grow by setting up a virtual team of workers to complete the necessary tasks throughout the year, benefiting everyone.
