The market of work is evolving. Millions of businesses worldwide are shifting away from traditional employment and hiring freelancers. Skilled freelance talent helps these businesses unlock their potential by solving complex problems, getting more work done, and completing projects faster.
If your business is debating hiring a freelancer rather than a full-time employee, you may be interested to learn that freelancers can bring a variety of benefits to your business. Freelancers present an opportunity for short-term, long-term, and highly skilled technical projects.
Why are more companies hiring freelancers?
There are many reasons companies are revaluating “business as usual” and turning to freelancers rather than hiring full-time staff. First, the recent pandemic caused one of the most significant shifts in hiring practices as traditional businesses were forced to adapt and change. Business owners and managers recognized that their workforce no longer needed to sit at a desk in an office from nine-to-five to be successful. The rise in remote workers, online collaboration tools, video conferencing, and talented workers dispersed around the globe has led many businesses to hire more freelancers.
At the same time, there has been a shift in how the world views freelancers and contract employees. Freelancers are increasingly seen as highly skilled professionals with valuable abilities that businesses need.
Below is a list of 12 reasons why more companies are hiring freelancers:
1) Cost savings
Traditional full-time employees are expensive. In addition to paying their salary, business owners are responsible for training costs, benefits, health insurance, paid time-off, and payroll taxes. In contrast, hiring a freelancer allows your business to eliminate many of these overhead costs. Freelancers don’t require a dedicated workspace in your office or training. Hiring a freelancer allows a business to reduce costs without sacrificing work output.
2) Access to specialized talent
Talented freelancers offer expertise that businesses can tap into with ease. If your business requires a specific skillset for a project, you can identify a freelancer that has spent years perfecting that same craft. The more experienced a freelancer is, the more value they can bring to a project. The business can benefit from the freelancer’s experience without devoting internal resources or adding a permanent position to their payroll.
3) High-quality work
Freelancers can deliver consistently high-quality work due to their range of experience. Before hiring a freelancer, you’ll have an opportunity to evaluate their past work portfolio, check out reviews from clients, and interview them to make sure they are the right fit. Since freelancers are often competing for projects, you can look for those who will give your project the attention and quality your company needs. By successfully completing your project, freelancers build their reputation, expand their portfolio, and increase their chance of future employment or referrals.
4) Faster deliverables
In addition to offering quality work, freelancers can often provide faster deliverables than full-time employees, and more quickly and accurately. Generally, full-time employees are tasked with multiple projects simultaneously. This often slows down projects and causes delays. In contrast, freelancers generally focus on one project at a time or work within shorter timeframes, which results in increased efficiency and faster project completion.
5) Larger talent pool
When hiring a full-time employee, companies are usually restricted to the area in which their business operates. By opening the opportunity to freelancers, companies can access a larger talent pool from around the world, which allows companies to find the specific talent, qualifications, and skills they require without settling for the best available person in their immediate area.
6) Company risk reduction
When you hire a full-time employee, you invest in that individual’s future with the company. Training and onboarding them costs money and time, which generally involves some risk. Rather than losing that investment if the employee decides to leave the company, working with a freelancer allows you to build a contract with specific deliverables before payment. Working with a freelancer also reduces the risk as you can make changes without impacting your internal processes.
7) No long-term commitment
When you hire a full-time employee, you’re now responsible for that individual’s livelihood, and they are expecting to have long-term job security. Freelancers can be hired for a short-term project, for a set amount of time, or to help with long-term projects with specific deliverables. This lack of a long-term commitment affords companies greater flexibility when hiring freelancers.
8) Ease of finding, hiring, and onboarding
According to a recent freelancing study, 36% of the US workforce is now freelancing in some capacity. That means that more than one in three people in the United States could be available to help your business. With those odds, your business will be able to find, hire, and onboard a freelancer quickly.
9) Increased diversity
Freelancers create an opportunity to expand the diversity of your company. Diversity helps increase the flow of ideas and often leads to better business solutions. A team of individuals from different geographic areas, educational backgrounds, cultures, and work disciplines can significantly increase your ability to handle various projects.
10) Schedule flexibility
One great benefit of freelancers is that they’re available to be hired 24/7. That means a freelancer is there to help you resolve last-minute emergencies when you need them. For example, a website may go down on Friday evening. If you must wait until Monday morning for your full-time employee to come back to work, you could be losing out on a full weekend’s worth of potential business. A conventional employee may clock out and go home at 5 o’clock, but freelancers often have a more flexible work schedule that can revolve around a client’s needs.
11) Short-term deadlines
Freelancers are excellent options for meeting quickly approaching deadlines. They can step in if something comes up, if you need additional support on a project, or if you need to make up for an absence on your team. Freelancers are often used to dealing with project deadlines and may have the schedule flexibility to help you complete your project even at the last minute.
12) Fresh perspective
Freelancers can bring a new and fresh perspective to a project. As an outsider, they may offer a unique idea that can greatly benefit a project. This fresh perspective may be a solution to a problem or a different way of understanding your customer’s needs. Plus, freelancers aren’t trapped in your company’s historical mindset, which lets you break free from the “that’s how it’s always been done” mentality that may be holding your business back.
Common freelancing services offered by JMD Live Online Business Consulting
Companies often turn to freelancers to help solve a variety of challenges, below is a list of our most popular freelance services:
- Overall Business Consultancy
- White Space Management
- Systemic Strategic Planning
- Regulatory Compliance
- Crisis & Reputation Management
Whatever your personal, corporate, or business needs, you can rely on JMD Live Online Business Consulting to provide you with the best and most economical personalized solutions to help you reach your goals and increase your bottom line.
J.Michael Dennis
Free Speech Absolutist / Personal & Corporate Fixer
Michel Ouellette JMD, ll.l., ll.m.
Systemic Strategic Planning / Regulatory Compliance / Crisis & Reputation Management
Skype: jmdlive
Phone: 1. 613.539.1793
Email: jmdlive@live.ca
Web: https://www.jmichaeldennis.live/
Michel Ouellette / J. Michael Dennis is a Former Attorney, a Trial Scientist, a Crisis & Reputation Management Expert, a Public Affairs & Corporate Communications Specialist, a Warrior for Common Sense and Free Speech.
Follow JMDlive on:
JMD Live Online Business Consulting ~ Twitter ~ LinkedIn ~ Facebook ~ Mastodon ~ Tumblr ~ Instagram ~ jmichaeldennis.ca ~ The World is Changing