Freelancers and employees – each have their own set of advantages and disadvantages.
Some businesses prefer having full time employees only, while some like to keep their business compact by hiring freelancers. But most of the companies and websites today deal with a mix of both. While they have employees for full time tasks, companies keep in hiring freelancers time to time for certain skilled jobs.
These jobs may vary from company to company. Let’s take an example of an app or website developer. Most of the companies have an in-house employee who builds and maintains the app or website from time to time. But there exist some such companies as well who like to make this a one time task. So, they hire a separate app developer to build an app for them, and hand over the control to their company itself at a later stage.
Now, since both of the business modules are functioning excellently, which one should YOU prefer?
Should you go with a full time employee, or a freelancer? Let’s have a look at pros and cons of each decision before making a final choice.
Hiring a full time employee
Here, you have in-house team looking after different functionalities of your business. One employee can either look after multiple functions, or can only take care of 1 task at a time. What tasks you need to allot, is totally your choice. But is keeping an employee worth for your business?
Pros
- There might be certain tasks which should be kept secure from the outer world. An employee very well understands that.
- You can monitor the work of the employee and can train him according to your needs.
- He is available to you as long as the working hours permit.
Cons
- Most of the times when there is no work and employee is free for the entire day, that counts towards your salary loss.
- An employee may be less skilled than what you initially wanted.
- Training him can take up lot of your time and effort, and you can be at a loss if he leaves you soon after.
Freelancer
There are various websites like Upwork and Freelancer, that connect you to the prospective people who can complete your task. Now should you really chose him or go with a employee?
Pros
- No compromise with the skills you need.
- You don’t have to spend extra money on training the freelancer.
- Since you do not have to hire him for full time, a lot of your money is saved while all your work is delivered.
- Saves a lot of your infrastructure costs.
Cons
- Sometimes it might take time to find a good freelancer for every project immediately.
- Freelancer is less answerable to you.
- It is difficult to monitor his way of work.
- You cannot be sure of the quality of work of every new freelancer you keep hiring for your projects.
Conclusion
Now, after having a look at various pros and cons of both decisions, what should you finally choose? If you are a small business who do not have money to spend on infrastructure and employees, you can go with freelancers. This will also be helpful when you have very less work throughout the year.
But, if you are a major company that has to deal in some task regularly, it is better to go with the employees. Moreover, when your security is of great concern, having a full time employee is the best option.