Taurai Minodawafa
As a business owner, sometimes new tasks come up that need to be finished. Accordingly, you may be wondering whether to hire a new employee or get a freelancer to handle it. This blog will explore hiring internally vs. hiring a freelancer and the pros and cons of both.
Hiring a new in-house employee
Hiring a new employee can seem like the way to go, but it’s essential to look beyond salary when it comes to the cost. Pay only represents one component of the cost of employment.
The Small Business Administration advises that the real cost of hiring an employee is typically 1.25 to 1.4 times that employee’s salary. This is because businesses have a range of expenses and tax obligations they must take on to hire a professional, in-house team member. Some of these expenses include benefits, payroll taxes, and insurance.
Hiring a freelancer
The cost of hiring a freelancer can be much less and be less complicated. All you pay is their hourly rate or the agreed-upon established fee.
Freelancers are self-employed, so they are responsible for their tax obligations. You don’t need to worry about state and federal payroll taxes when going the freelancer route. Unlike employees, a freelancer’s tax situation isn’t really any of your business. You also don’t have to concern yourself with paying the benefits or insurance that an in-house employee would need.
When to handle things in-house
Seeing these factors, you probably know what you need and don’t need for your project. It would be best if you handled projects in-house when you want complete control over them. When you outsource, you lose control to a degree and can’t monitor how someone handles your endeavour.
You should also consider hiring in-house if you need long-term support. If you have a project such as software development, you will need someone constantly there that you can count on. Contractors may offer long-term support, but they are not obligated to do so, and you won’t know if they’re available when you need them.
You may consider hiring in-house if you have sensitive information that needs handling as well. There will be plenty of situations where you don’t want anyone outside of the company to know certain info, and an in-house employee is the best way to ensure it stays private.
When to outsource
In contrast, there are many projects where hiring a freelancer works just fine. This would include when you need short-term help, specific tasks are becoming a distraction, you don’t have an in-house expert, you’re on a tight deadline, or you’re on a limited budget.
You can outsource pretty much any aspect of your business. Some easy tasks to hire freelancers for our customer support, data entry, marketing (social media marketing, SEO, email marketing, marketing strategy, etc.), accounting/bookkeeping, content writing (blog posts, ebooks, case studies, white papers, ad copy, technical documentation, etc.), graphic design, web design, and video editing.
After reading, if you are leaning more towards outsourcing than hiring a new employee, Afriblocks makes it easy to hire freelancers for whatever job your need completed at a more than reasonable rate. Please feel free to reach out with whatever needs you may have.
