Why companies should hire and use freelancers

The last time I blogged about why freelancing is better than full time employment I was really addressing the advantages of freelancing as seen in from the freelancer’s point of view. I would like to share some facts why I also believe that freelancing is better for companies, NGOs and corporates:

1.    1.   It’s far away lot cheaper: This is plain fact; freelancers will always be cheaper than their fellow agencies or corporates. Agencies and corporates have to factor in salaries for all staff, rent, logistics such as lunch and transport for all staff and definitely profit on a project hence making it more expensive to do business. On the hand freelancers are always sensitive to cost and will charge you for purely the effort and time spent on the project. If you are company or agency planning on cutting costs (one wonders which corporate would not like to cut costs), kindly try hiring and using freelancers – maybe you will see the difference. 

2.      2.  No IT support needed – you know ICT has become a must have component for all offices.  For every employee you add, you add more load onto the IT team (they need to create user names for new users, carry out backups for an extra employee, monitor an extra computer on the network and lots more) and offer guidance to that new person that you have added onto the team. Soon your IT team needs to grow bigger and your office spends more. But if the office decided to use the services of a freelancer, then no IT support is needed, your office IT is maintained, people are happy and your work is done by the freelancer from where he will be – you don’t even need to offer office space – the freelancer will only appear for meetings, demos and trainings if any.

3.     3.  No new equipment to buy: Most freelancers have their own software, computers and all tools they need. So the office does not spend on an extra license for the anti-virus, extra books to help the freelancer cope, no new desk extension as they would do on a new employee.

4.      4.  No much paperwork: We all have seen those employee lists that show the employee names, contact details, extension numbers and much more. Such a list would be much shorter if the company used freelancers. Definitely things like staff files, memos, and all that paperwork that a company does will be much reduced if freelancers are used. They even don’t have to sign in the attendance sheet or compile timesheets like normal employees do hence reduction of paperwork. 

5.        5. No HR complaints :  Most freelancers rarely go to the HR department.  They deal with project managers and maybe accountants for payments. This reduces the issues you would have with HR especially about offering annual leave, maternity leave and the rest. If a company uses freelancers, the manager can actually do away with HR and hence save lots of costs. And even if they keep the HR department, still the complaints to the HR would be grreatly reduced.

6.     6.   Helps the environment: We all know that the more people in a place the more damage to the environment – more noise, more pollution, more gossip, name it. So freelancers if hired for the company will keep the company environment decongested since they never work from the company premises.

7.     7.   If I don’t work, I don’t get paid, unlike most employees: In simple terms, there is no pretense work in freelancing. You get paid for what you deliver. In companies, permanent employees get paid even when they facebook all day, or chat and youtube all day using company resources, companies would make lots of savings if they used more freelancers and less permanent staff. 

8.      8.  It’s much easier to fire freelancers – If the company does not like the work, the freelancer can be fired and another brought on board. The mood in the company will not be affected. Permanent staff on the hand are hard to fire considering that they have standing contracts and more so have friends at the company so firing one employee makes the other employees feel insecure and management always has to go an extra mile to reassure confidence in those left behind – but with freelancers, just fire and hire, the next freelancer that comes will be noticed only by those employees working on the same project. The rest of the office will never know.

9.      9.  Quick responses – you ask for something, it shows up, no hand holding required. Freelancers are known to be quick since they see each assignment in times of money that can be made from it. So delaying means delaying the payment as well.

10.   10. No need to deal with annoying habits: Employees come with all sorts of habits, and as such some are annoying, some are great, some are jolly and all. A company that uses freelancers will have limited how many types of habits come into the company pool – as thus the company will be in position to avoid those bad annoying habits that some people carry by simply hiring freelancers.

I can go on and on but I hope that I have shade some light why companies and agencies should think seriously at utilizing freelancers – the trend has come and  only those who adopt will sail through, those who insist will definitely sail through too but with extra effort to counter attack all the above reasons.