Have you ever thought about working with a freelancer? Your view is likely to be influenced by the type of business you’re in. IT and software firms use independent contractors as a matter of course and often on long term projects. Creative industries will put together a freelance team to work on a short term project then everyone goes their separate ways.
What if I’m a new start up?
If you’re a new start up with limited funds you might hesitate to use precious resources to hire a freelancer. It’s true that money can be tight before you start bringing in some profit. In those circumstances you need to look at where your time and money will work hardest for you. It’s likely that you’ve set up your business to reflect your core competence, whether that’s providing a service or making a product. Starting up in business is a steep learning curve and you’ll be developing new skills, whether that’s content creation, marketing or setting up a web page.
If you’re spending entire days cursing at your computer because you can’t get your website up and running, you aren’t engaging with your customers. Equally, if the website’s there but you’re struggling to write content, your new audience aren’t learning about you and what you can do for them. A relatively small investment enables you to make your business presence felt and starts bringing in customers.
We’ve got everything covered
If you’re running a larger company you might think you’ve got everything covered. You’ll have ancillary staff dealing with finance, administration and marketing. They can cover everything, can’t they? Well, possibly. Is your computer system working for you or do your staff complain that it’s cumbersome and difficult to work with? If the staff in your IT department are also experts in designing a new software system then congratulations.
How is your marketing going? Are your marketing team at full stretch but reporting that their efforts aren’t yielding the same results they once were? It might be time for a rebrand. That’s a major project that will need to be achieved alongside your marketing team’s existing workload.
Do you need a freelancer?
No matter what stage of business you’re at or how big your company is, there will be times when your workload temporarily increases or you need specialist skills. A freelancer can help you in either situation. A good freelancer will usually have found themselves a niche and set about developing an impressive skillset within that area. This not only means that they are able to offer you a bespoke solution, they’ll be able to provide it much more quickly than your existing staff could.
In circumstances where you’re dealing with a temporary increase in workload, a freelancer can hit the ground running. They’re used to it. This means that they can get cracking on your project whilst your permanent staff offer assistance but retain the ability to carry out their usual duties.
Convenience is key
The greatest benefit to hiring a freelancer is the convenience. You don’t employ them so the only thing you have to think about is whether their work meets your requirements and when you need to pay them. They pay their own tax and NI and you don’t have to worry about enrolling them in a pension scheme. Best of all, if the relationship doesn’t work out you don’t have to go through a long drawn out process to get rid of them. You just don’t work with them again.
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