Best Ways To Outsource Jobs to Freelancers

📖 Learning

Piyush Mishra

Feb 25, 2021 — 7 min read

What does outsourcing essentially mean? It means that there are certain tasks in your company that for certain reasons you and your current employees are unable to do. So you give that work to someone else who is not a part of the main company. It's not as simple as it looks. But it is best to outsource jobs to freelancers.

You have to very careful and wise about outsourcing, the kind of freelancer that you are hiring and the kinds of work which when outsourced will bring you the greatest profit.

Most Common Challenges Faced By Small Companies
Benefits Of Outsourcing Jobs To Freelancer
Tips on Outsourcing Jobs To Freelancer

A freelancer or an outside firm will not understand the passion and essence of your company. They will not do the work the way you want them to do. This can change the way people conceive your company and can also downgrade the quality of your product. What we mean here is that not all tasks in your company are meant to be outsourced. You have to know the kinds of tasks that can be safely outsourced, whether you should hire a freelancer or another firm or should you do the work.

But still, outsourcing is a very popular option, especially among small companies. Why so?

That’s because at the end of the day you can make more money and have more chances of profit. But you cannot just use freelancers to do the less important tasks. But it is best to outsource jobs to freelancers because your work will be done easily and with more profit. That will only hold your company back in the long run. Try outsourcing in the sales and revenue sectors.

Most Common Challenges Faced By Small Companies

Hiring new employees
Increasing profit
Employee healthcare
Growing revenue
Cash flow

Out of the five challenges listed above the options that are favored by outsourcing are Increasing profits, Growing revenue, and Cash flow. It allows you to bypass employee hassles and lets you function as smoothly as possible.

Now that you know the basic advantages outsource jobs to freelancer to do your task you must decide on what kind of tasks should you outsource. To begin, try and keep a record of your activities. Identify the tasks that you do the most and that have the highest value. Keep them to yourself. The tasks that you outsource should be such that they have low-value returns and something that you and your current employees cannot do well. But take care that the job that you give them shouldn’t be your key competency.

Benefits Of Outsourcing Jobs To Freelancer

The task will be done by someone who specializes in it and will, therefore, have better quality. Thus, improvement in quality, and you also save time.
You can get the task done on an economic scale by outsource jobs to freelancer rather than getting a full time employee.
As you have given the task to someone else you can now focus on what’s important and give more time into planning future projects and products.

Tips on Outsourcing Jobs To Freelancer

Don't Overdo It

Like said before, you have to be careful too. You have to control the amount of outsourcing that your company does. Too much of anything is bad and that goes for outsourcing too. If you outsource too much it won’t take long for your company to become weak. All your competitors need to make you fall is a few freelancers. Also over time, you will realize that your company is changing and you will start losing your foothold. The quality and reputation will also change and so will your customer base.

Hide Your Key Competency

There’s an important lesson to be learned before you choose a freelancer to do your job. Never give them control over your key competency. What is meant by key competency? It is that thing that makes your company what it is. In easier language, the thing or rather the idea that sets your company apart. If you give that away, it would be like allowing someone else to drive your favorite car. Your key competency is the root or the foundation underneath your company. Giving that to someone else will change the very essence of your company.

So, how will you recognize your key competency? Look at Apple, their key competency being the design of the smartphone. They employ a lot of freelancers to do a bunch of other technical but only the Apple company can make the phone look like an iPhone. That’s their basic essence.

You should ask yourself, what is that thing that sets my company apart from others? What ideas, passion, and choices define your business?

Set Your Goals First

But this doesn’t mean that you will blindly outsource anything that is not your key competency. You have to first ask yourself the very basic question that most people fail to do: why should I outsource? See, the answer to this question will decide whether the outsourcing will give positive results or not. You have to give it a thought before you come to a decision. Is it really necessary to outsource? Because the task is so non-essential, you might want to just download good software and take care of it.

Choose a Platform

There are a number of sites that serve as marketplaces to hire freelancers, including Upwork, Freelancer.com, People Per Hour, and many others. Choose only one site, this keeps it simple to manage. It’s also worth noting that there are more niche job websites that can provide better results for certain tasks. People most often use same sites for hiring and managing projects.

Do Not Always Choose Lowest Bid

Hiring someone to do your job just because of the price is the biggest mistakes. Although price is an important factor but so is experience and quality of work delivered by an individual. The bids vary drastically as people having different work experience, from all around world send you bids. Settle for a bid that offers you a reasonable price and enough experience to handle your project.

Price is one factor that you want to consider, but it’s not the only factor.

When You Should Outsource Jobs To Freelancer?

You might outsource because you want to save money or maybe you and your current employees simply don’t like the task. But only focusing on money may not always work in your favor. Maybe in the short term, it may seem like a good decision but in the long run, it can have negative impacts on your business. Try and avoid outsourcing in critical sectors like sales & hire.

Use New Technologies

It’s always a smart help to take help from the software sector. If there’s a software that can take care of your tasks that you don’t want to do, then go and check if you can solve the problem with the software. It’s always better, easy, and hassle-free than hiring an actual human to do the work. There is a lot of software available on the internet that can do a lot to boost your productivity. For instance, 94% of marketers have claimed that taking the help of software to do their work has helped improve their work and also helped them enhance their quality of work.

Hire a Professional for Legal Works

However, there are certain kinds of work that you simply mustn’t handle on your own. Like taxing and handling of legal documents. It’s always a wise decision to consult a professional for such tasks. Most of the small companies hire freelancers or firms to take care of tasks like this. Also normally these kinds of tasks are specialized and their services are required only a few times in a year. Hence it’s not a wise decision to employ someone full time for this. Rather outsourcing is the wisest decision in this case.

Conclusion

As far as outsourcing is concerned, your choice depends on the task that you’ll be handing out. Finance and accounting are where the major bulk of outsourcing occurs.

Also, the IT sector has witnessed a massive increase in outsourcing because of the problems related to this sector require specialized and skilled help. Currently outsourced IT work like project-based and statement of work tasks are now equal to staff increase for IT work. The legal sector is seeing a steady increase in outsourcing as more and more companies are hiring lawyers and established firms to take care of the legal part of their businesses.

All of these changes and trends including the increase in outsourcing and freelancing is part of the popular gig culture that is becoming the new norm of the business world.

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