Over the past five years, we have seen an increase in businesses outsourcing various types of work.
This isn’t a new way of going about business; people have been paying others to do work without needing to hire them for centuries.
Look at lawyers – no business has their own, in-house lawyer, they merely pay a firm for their legal services. But why is it now on the rise?
What is it about outsourcing that has become so appealing to a business?
The simple answer, which can be easily broken down, is that it’s convenient. You don’t have to go through the whole hiring process, nor do you have to create a contract and find office space for new employees.
There are ready-made, skilled and experienced people who belong to an agency or work for themselves, ready to do the work you want to be done.
Outsourcing saves money, not just on the hiring and office space, but also on training and benefits. An average employee is entitled to five weeks paid holiday, plus sick pay, and quite often bonuses throughout the year.
Extra benefits like cycle to work schemes and childcare vouchers are yet another expense companies pay out for their employees.
But with outsourcing, you are paying an agency, freelancer or another company to complete the work. Meaning that you don’t have to pay for any of those benefits as the person doing the work isn’t your employee.
You also only need to pay for the services as and when you need them. If you only need financial advice at the end of each tax year, then that’s when you pay for it, and not a year’s salary spread across months where you don’t really need the person.
This means that businesses can save money on office space too – not only do they not have to expand and find space, but they can shrink down to what they need.
The ease in which you can outsource the work, with the help of the internet, just shows again how convenient it is. Sites like freelancer allows you to find a self-employed writer, or bookkeeper, or photographer with ease.
And simply googling what you’re looking for will bring up more than enough avenues to look at.
Some people aren’t a fan of how businesses are developing in this manner, due to the lack of contracted jobs available.
But the surge in self-employed, or multiple jobbed millennials now well and truly breaking into the working world, isn’t something that can be ignored. Businesses are adapting to what the world is offering.
