5 Benefits of Hiring Freelancers
Whether you’re a small business or large, one thing is clear: you can’t do it all. Your success is only going to be as strong as the team you have supporting you.
But building a team doesn’t necessarily mean you need to hire a ton of full-time employees. While a lot of tasks do require an in-house employee to get accomplished the right way, there are numerous benefits of hiring freelancers to support your business.
In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the biggest gains you have to make from choosing an independent contractor over a traditional employee.
#1 – Reduced Overhead Costs
Traditional employees require traditional expenses. These overhead costs come in many forms for many businesses, but here are a few of the major expenses that you’re probably going to be saving on by hiring freelancers:
Office Space. Freelancers are generally expected to work in their own space. This saves you the hassle of finding or creating space for them (and the costs that come with that as well). It also means you have more space to designate to your full-timers and other business operations.
Benefits. In the U.S., employers are expected to provide benefits (such as health care) if they have fifty or more full-time employees. A benefit of hiring freelancers is that you are keeping your total employee number down, so you can grow more without reaching the limit. If you’ve already got those fifty employees on board, hiring freelancers means that you are just paying for the work rather than increasing your benefit expenses too.
Human Resources. As an employer, you’re required to take care of red tape like withholding taxes from your employees’ paychecks. So every new employee you hire means more work for your HR department. And for most small business owners, you are the HR department. Freelancers take care of their own taxes, though, so you don’t need to be concerned with anything but paying the bill once the work is done.
#2 – Focused Expertise
Another one of the top benefits of hiring freelancers is the ability to find an expert in the field for whatever little micro task you need done. For example, maybe your business needs to refresh its outdated website.
You don’t have enough regular need for web design to bring a full-time designer on board, so you find a skilled freelancer to outsource the task to. Maybe you employ their services a few times a year for maintenance or new content, but there is no expectation of a long term contract.
Similarly, you can find a freelancer who has unique expertise for lots of jobs. Here are just a few of them:
- Content creation
- Search engine optimization
- Visual design
- Media production
- Data entry
- App development
- Marketing
#3 – Less Obligation for Training
Business owners love to hire freelancers the same way homeowners love to hire electricians.
You are finding someone who can get the work you need done without a lot of hand holding. Sure, the homeowner has to let the electrician in the front door, show them around the house, and describe the problem. But the professional takes it from there.
When you hire a freelancer, you don’t have the same expectation to provide training or professional development that you would for a full-time employee. You’ve obviously got to give clear instructions and expectations. In the end, though, it’s the freelancers responsibility to develop their own skill set and stay on top of the best practices in their industry.
#4 – Less Management, Better Work
Another one of the benefits of hiring freelancers is that you aren’t investing time or other resources into managing their work. By their very nature, independent contractors work for and by themselves. They are their own boss, so they don’t need you to set a schedule for them or micromanage their tasks.
The lack of management has another benefit too: increased productivity. Since they are typically paid by the job rather than by the hour, your freelancers have motivation to get work done faster and better than a typical employee might.
While traditional work settings often inadvertently foster unproductive work habits, freelancers know that the more efficiently they can work, the more money they can make.
#5 – Simplified Hiring Process
Hiring freelancers is a lot easier than traditional employees. For the most part, the process is limited to reviewing samples and maybe asking a few questions back and forth via chat or email. You don’t typically need to put together a hiring committee or hold live interviews.
>> Be Sure To Check Out Our Guide to Hiring Freelancers <<
Some employers may opt for a video chat just to weed out sketchy applicants. But, for the most part, hiring freelancers is a cinch because you are not making a long term commitment. If things don’t work out for the first job, you simply don’t give that freelancer more work.
On-boarding a traditional employee involves much more rigmarole because you are running a major risk if you hire the wrong person. It’s infinitely harder to let a full-time employee go if they are not performing well.
Are You Ready To Build the Workforce of the Future?
It’s predicted that by the year 2027, 50% of the U.S. workforce will be comprised of independent contractors.
If you are looking to grow your business and reap the benefits of hiring freelancers, it’s time to think about how the gig economy fits into your company’s future.
Hundreds of business owners find the freelance talent they need on Legiit every day. It’s a secure online marketplace that matches quality workers with the employers and entrepreneurs who need them most.
Take a look at our ever-growing list of world class services today and find the freelancer that’s right for you.