Building Your Team – Why Hiring Freelancers a Good Idea?

hiring freelancers

36% of the total US workforce freelances either full-time or part-time. This number clearly shows how employers have embraced telecommuters who are not on their payroll. And the pandemic has brought about a positive change in the mindset towards freelance workers.

If you are planning to hire new employees, you should never miss tapping on talents who work freelance. Here are some of the reasons.

Hiring freelancers

Advantages of Hiring a Freelancer

1. Less Cost

Your full-time employees may rotate between projects when one project winds down. During that latency period, they may sit idle, and you can’t bill your client. So, you have to bear their cost from your company’s account.

Hiring a freelancer for a particular time or project relieves you from the obligation of paying them even if they hit the bench. The moment their work is over, you can pay them based on your contract and release them from work.

Also, don’t forget you need not pay the freelancers the bouquet of benefits your employees receive. The monthly awards at the organization, the yearly bonus, health insurance, and other payments are saved to a significant amount.

Most freelancers work remotely from their own laptops. Thus, you save a considerable amount on infrastructure.

2. Less Risk

Freelancers aren’t your employees. So, they don’t enjoy your company’s leave policies and hence, probably would stick around more when deadlines approach. Also, they are paid on an hourly or project basis, which puts on them many self-fulfilling responsibilities when it comes to quality.

You can terminate a freelancer rather easily if you are not satisfied with the work or planning to ramp down a team. But you can’t do this with a full-time employee so easily as you are bound by the notice period and HR policies.

3. Better Skills

Quite often, freelancers are highly specialized in their work. They bring with them a plethora of experience by working with multiple and global clients. They are rich in communication skills and well-versed in their domain and skills.

Freelancers are willing to invest more time investigating problems because slacking off at work would snatch away their credibility, testimonials, and payments. In addition, 59% of the freelancers engage themselves in skill-building compared to 36% of the people who don’t freelance.

4. Bigger Talent Pool

You can employ freelancers from any corner of the world irrespective of the project duration of the skill. However, you may not find a full-time employee for a small project that demands a niche skill.

For instance, if you need a Japanese translator, you can choose a freelancer from the pool available in the world, use their expertise and then free them from your project. Unfortunately, full-time employees may lack such specialized skills or may not get another project with that skill.

5. Diversity

While the world is moving towards embracing diversity, why wouldn’t you?

A pool of freelancers working in your organization can fulfill this global trend. You can have people from all ethnicities, countries, educational backgrounds, and age groups.

With diversity comes the richness in knowledge and tolerance. And that’s what you need in your employees, right? Moreover, this also helps you to establish your brand as a global organization with inclusion.

6. Networking

You might bring in a whole team when you hire a freelancer. And that would take off a considerable burden of recruiting suitable candidates.

Suppose you hire a freelance developer in Python. The resource might help you to hire suitable candidates for your machine learning project from their circuit. This way, the time to hire is reduced and assures of the quality of resources.

Hiring a freelancer on recommendation is much faster than hiring a full-time employee. A freelancer can join sooner than a full-timer, and you can grab hold of a good resource immediately.

7. Flexibility

With freelancers, you are usually bound by an NDA and contractual agreement but not by HR policies and probably labour laws. This gives you the flexibility to terminate a freelancer without too many hassles.

And when you hire freelancers, they can join at short notice or even immediately. A full-time employee may need to serve the notice period of their current employer, which might extend as long as two months.

Having freelancers in your team gives you the legroom to scale your team and with great ease.

Gig economy

Are You Ready to Embrace Gig Economy?

Since 88% of the 59M surveyed people plan to continue freelancing, you might like to go with the flow with this hiring trend. With immense benefits, the future of hiring freelancers might see more reforms and acceptance as most organizations have embraced remote working as a viable option for everyone.

So, you might like to pick your workforce with consideration and contribute more towards the gig economy.