To Hire or To Outsource?
Your business is expanding… and now comes the greatest debate of all times: Hire Employees or Outsource Independent Contractors? The cost of doing business today has never been an easy reality to face, specially when competition is becoming tougher and budget is getting tighter. In the past decade, offices employ a mix of full-time in-house staff, part-time employees, and a very small percentage of freelance workers. Today, the trend seems to go on the reverse as more employees get fired and more contractual workers get hired. There are more freelancers today who are struggling to make ends meet and there are many businesses who don’t want to enter that long-term commitment with employees.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Hiring Employees
PROS:
- Let’s face it: We are all social animals! This means that working in a real office setup makes it much easier to build the spirit of teamwork among your employees, where they feel the corporate spirit.
- There’s more room for instant exchanges of creative ideas since your employees are working in a collective mind, saving you precious time in assigning small tasks and making corrections.
- You can train your employees anytime and faster since you are dealing with them face-to-face.
- You can control the security and integrity of your company’s sensitive data.
CONS
- You need to invest a great deal of time in honing your management skills since you will deal with people in real life, which can mean having the patience to understand their unique personalities.
- You have bigger overhead costs which includes employee benefits, taxes, insurance, equipment, training, tools, and HR work. With your employees’ monthly salary, you pay them each month at a fixed cost, no matter if your finances are doing good or bad.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Outsourcing
PROS:
- You can outsource a small or big task and control the way you want to pay your workers. You can choose to pay hourly or fixed rate.
- You will have more freedom to run your business when you assign your outsourced workers routine tasks, which reduces your everyday stress. By splitting tasks to your remote workers, you can control just how much they need to know about your business practices.
- You get quick access to highly specialized skills without wasting precious time in making job interviews. You don’t even have to train them.
- Not only is outsourcing cheaper, which can save you a lot from overhead costs, but you also get a job done on a need basis. You can avoid red tapes too.
CONS:
- You get a lot of frustrations when you want to talk to your freelancers and they are not readily available.
- You have no guarantee of loyalty, where the remote worker can simply drop the project and move on to another.
- Those who are very good at what they do are always too busy with jobs and you get surplus talents.
- It is hard to supervise remote workers and build a good virtual team. You just don’t know if they are really working on tasks, or if they’re playing around with your time and money.
- You may get hidden charges where what should have been a week’s work turned into a month or more, making you pay MORE.
- Hiring non-native English speakers? Language barrier can really create issues, specially with written or verbal instructions.
In the end, the answer to your question shall depend on what your business really needs and how much you are willing to spend for it. You can always hire an employee with dedication, or get a work-on-demand freelancer with other projects in hand. Whichever your choice is, always have a clear plan and make sure your workers help you get your goals. Good Luck!
Outsourcing: Hiring a New Employee
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