Running a startup is not for the light-hearted. Being a founder in this economy is a half-and-half mixture of determination, quick thinking, and years of mind-numbing hard work and toil.
In an economy like ours where the overheads constantly keep increasing, day by day and hour by hour;
One way you ease the burden is by cutting down on the extra cost and hiring freelancers.
A freelancer is an individual who works for you or your firm on a contractual project basis. These professionals are self-employed and do not offer a long-term commitment to any one employer.
With the rise of social media and the continued success of digital marketing, the world’s content needs are on the rise. It’s fair to see that freelancers are currently shouldering the world’s economy of creation via their valuable contributions in areas like marketing, finance, product building, design, coding, etc.
Your perception of a freelancer may extend up to a young adult working without deadlines in their home office or den, as they call it. However, the efforts of the freelancer community and the outcomes that they’ve generated have allowed them to outgrow this perception rather easily, in a short period.
This explains the paradigm shift in the manner in which business works and things get done in today’s world. Far from the early days when companies obsessed over having all their employees in one position in a cramped-up office, startups and even big corporations are slowly changing their modus operandi.
With the pandemic adding to the increased costs and rising debts, saving money has become one of the top priorities of nascent firms in today’s day and age. As a result, most of these companies have actively begun associating and working with freelancers rather than nurturing employees over years and years.
Not only are freelancers more budget-friendly in the long run, but they also add more value to the company with the range of experience, diversity of experience, and sheer expertise that they bring to the table.
Here are the top four ways hiring a freelancer might not just save you some pennies but also help grow your company in the right direction and at the right pivotal time.
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1. You save money on company infrastructure
Your company infrastructure comprises the cumulative total of all the physical assets in the name of your business. This includes your total office space, money spent on employee resources, chairs, electricity spent, and maintaining the pantry. It never really ends!
Startups end up burning a lot of money on acquiring, maintaining, and keeping their employees happy. And at some point, it does feel like it is not exactly manageable when you’re running on a tight budget.
Every employee that works for the company, within the company’s office premises is owed salary, perks, and space. The fewer people you hire, the lesser will be your obligations to them.
Guess what that translates into?
Lesser team costs, lower rent, and lower bills for the same amount of work and resources.
Let’s say you’re looking for a freelance photographer. When you hire a freelance photographer, you also onboard their equipment, their work infrastructure, and the diversity of their experiences learned across different projects.
As a result, all that you are left with paying for is the final product received at the termination of your project!
You can always enter into a new project with the same freelancer when you like their work, renew their project, and get on with it when the needs arrive!
2. You get to avoid resource training costs!
Nothing in this world comes for free. And nurtured in-house talent? Definitely not.
In-house teams in big companies are a cumulation of huge amounts of efforts and investments in training.
When hiring an employee, a company must nurture them step by step into the firm’s culture, calculate and account for the resource cost of hiring a fresher in the industry, and take charge of their mistakes- all of which are paid from the company’s coffers.
And hire costs, means lower profits and lower savings!
Most of these hassles are removed when you onboard a freelancer.
Freelancers come with a magic tool. It’s called a work portfolio that gives you a complete insight into their abilities, past work, and vision. It helps you as a company have an idea about what you’re signing up for.
Instead of spending huge amounts of money on grand HR gestures, as a startup founder, you could simply hand out a project to a freelancer who knows what buttons to push and how to get tasks done.
3. You Pay For What You Get – Nothing Less and Nothing More!
Disguised Employment is one of the key things that prevent a hockey stick growth for any company. No matter what sector they are placed in.
If we go by definitions, Disguised Unemployment is a kind of peculiar situation in which
People who are employed in a job do not actually contribute to the process of production of goods and services. They add no value to the production chain.
It’s called hidden unemployment because it has five people doing the job of a single one, which comes at a massive cost to the company.
A lot of times full-time employees get paid for not doing anything, and not adding anything to the value chain but just warming their comfortable chiropractic chairs.
This means more costs, and lesser value generation, which means lesser revenue and revenue and hence fewer profits.
When you hire freelancers you pay them for the tangible work that they produce. You account for the assets generated and not hours put in.
This clears out every single ounce of hidden unemployment present and you only pay for what is of use to you, tangibly.
Let us say, it is a bad month for the company and the numbers are not as promising. In these situations, you wouldn’t want to burn money on hiring. You can simply choose to not hire a freelancer that month and it helps cut down company expenses a bomb!
This means no tantrums, no fusses, no employee grudges – pure business!
4. Hiring a Freelancer is Hiring Experience and Perspective
The secret to great products is quality, not quantity. Equipped with a small but highly talented team supported by a pool of freelancers who know what they are doing is the best way you undertake a zero-to-one journey.
While hiring freelancers, you’re not just hiring a person, but you’re also hiring their renewed perspective, diversity of point of view, and the expertise they’ve garnered over time.
While dealing with freelancers, your company has a huge scope of negotiation on the table. You have the liberty to figure out a price that works for you and if you don’t, you’re free to look elsewhere!
Every business needs a few full-time employees to build the company culture, but none of that comes easy. Especially not when you’re running a small business in the economy of the 21st century which is as much shock-driven as it is pandemic driven.
Hiring freelancers to drive your projects might be the best decision you ever took if you and your company are looking for great results at great prices.
If you want to cut your business expenses, improve your numbers and get quality work – using freelancers makes a lot of sense!
Read also: 7 Steps to Hiring a Freelancer