Pitfalls of Hiring a Freelancer

As your business grows, keeping up with the increasing demands can become a significant challenge. Hiring full-time staff for functions like accounting, marketing, and compliance can be financially burdensome, particularly if you don’t need these skills on a full-time basis. Hiring a freelancer is a consideration, but there are numerous uncertainties with freelance work that may make the risk versus reward a non-viable option. 

A better solution? 

Teaming up with a BPO company.

BPO, or business process outsourcing, is a model that involves contracting specific business tasks to a third-party service provider. These providers offer skilled professionals to handle functions on an as-needed, part-time, or full-time basis, making it a cost-effective solution compared to hiring full-time employees. You get access to a global workforce, but those resources are employed by the BPO agency, not your company. BPO also offers security and reliability that freelance work, by nature, cannot. 

The BPO solution is increasing in popularity. In 2022, the BPO market (globally) reached $245.9 billion. By 2032, it’s projected to reach $544.8 billion based on increased demand and the expansion of BPO services. 

In this article, we’ll explain what a BPO team is, and why hiring one is a better solution than hiring an individual freelancer for your business’s needs.

Lack of Commitment from Freelancers

One of the biggest fears you might have about hiring a freelancer is the potential lack of commitment. What would happen if you hire a freelancer, depend on them for an assignment you desperately need, and they either fail to provide it or provide it too late? As a business owner, you can’t afford that kind of risk. 

If you were to hire a freelance accountant to handle your payroll, for instance, and the freelancer failed to submit automatic payments on time, you could face disgruntled employees, accounting errors, and even legal action. 

Alternatively, a BPO team eliminates commitment issues. BPO employees give you peace of mind knowing your projects will be completed consistently and timely. You can rely on your BPO employees for your needs without wondering if an assigned task will be given attention or abandoned, because though outsourced, these team members work for you and are not self-employed. 

While commitment is a major issue with freelancers, the quality of work can also be problematic. Freelance work is known to vary significantly between different individuals and companies that provide for-hire employees.

Inconsistent Quality from Freelancers

Inconsistency with work can be frustrating for businesses, employees, and customers. Freelance work comes with a risk of inconsistency, especially if your work is collected from numerous freelancers. 

Even more problematic is the effect of inconsistent production on the business itself. Discrepancies in marketing, conflicting reports about customer service, and frequent unexpected changes can all affect employee and customer satisfaction and negatively impact your business.
The benefit of hiring BPO employees is that you’ll shore up aspects of your business that you outsource with stable, congruous work that your in-house employees and customer base can rely upon. In addition to quality concerns, effective communication can be a challenge when working with freelancers, further complicating the customer and employee experience.

Communication Challenges with Freelancers

The majority of freelance hires are recruited through websites. Due to the nature of freelance work, many positions will not require any facetime from the freelancer themselves. This can reduce communication to emails, text messages, Slack channels, or phone calls. While these forms of communication can be effective, they can also present communication breakdown. 

If a business owner isn’t explicitly clear with an assignment or an expectation, there’s room for error. Likewise, if a freelancer does not clearly communicate their abilities or time frames for production, holes can develop in communication that can lead to errors, missed deadlines, or unanswered questions. 

Unlike freelance work, BPO employees communicate via structured protocols to ensure that there is always a clear and constant flow of information, allowing you to communicate more effectively with one another. Outsourced employees become familiar with you, your in-house employees, and your business model so that effective communication flows naturally.

Communication is vital to the success of your business, but security is another critical area where freelancers may fall short.

Security Risks with Freelancers

Many businesses turn to freelance employees for tasks that involve the handling and processing of sensitive information. Health companies that would like to outsource aspects of their business to freelancers must find ones that fully understand HIPAA regulations. Businesses that store any kind of client data must have protocols in place to ensure the security of information and protect against data breaches.

Data breaches are massively destructive to a business, and unfortunately many of them originate within company walls. When working with freelancers who aren’t as invested in your company as your employees, the risk is even greater. If a data breach is large enough, it can cause significant financial, reputational, and legal fallout. 

If, however, you choose the BPO model, you’ll get the benefit of employees who are working within stringent protocols adopted by the outsourcing company itself. These are often certified with international standards, like ISO/IEC 27001:2013. These security measures protect you, your clients, and the outsourcing company against security threats.

Security is paramount, and accountability is equally important to ensure reliable performance.

Lack of Accountability with Freelancers

Freelancers are not and never will be your direct employees. That means you have a limited amount of control over how they respond to assignments, take direction, and correct mistakes.

If you hire a freelancer, there’s a chance they won’t be accountable for their work. If a freelancer doesn’t want to revisit a project, or meet an unmet expectation, there may be little recourse for the business owner. 

Hiring a BPO team is a better solution. These teams, though outsourced, are your employees, and will operate under your performance metrics, remaining accountable to your business standards. BPO teams will also be held to the work performance standards of the outsourcing company itself, adding a layer of accountability that further incentivizes better work product. 

Without accountability, issues may arise that leach out additional funds from your business. These hidden costs can be another concern with hiring a freelance worker.

Hidden Costs of Hiring Freelancers

Many businesses that hire freelance workers do so for a myriad of reasons, including doing so as a cost-saving option to hiring a full-time employee. Unfortunately, hidden costs can arise if you hire an unreliable, unaccountable freelance worker. 

For instance, if you hire a freelance compliance compliance officer and they fail to effectively keep your data safe or cause you to violate a privacy policy, the expense can be taxing. You’ll now incur legal fees, fines, and additional costs related to this incident, and will likely lose money and time dealing with the situation itself.

If a freelance worker fails to provide a task on time, you may end up paying another employee overtime to take care of the task that was not done, or to clean up a project that a freelance worker abandoned. These costs can add up, and exhaust your budget for the project or freelance position. 

Hiring a BPO team is a better solution. BPO companies offer transparent pricing and comprehensive service packages so you never have to worry about hidden costs. No missed deadlines, unusable work, or surprise costs means you can rest easy knowing your business is safe. 

Understanding the hidden costs can help businesses make better outsourcing decisions.

Why Choose STAFFVIRTUAL

When considering BPO services, STAFFVIRTUAL is your go-to solution. Our extensive experience and expertise in the BPO market set us apart from newer companies. We’ve been offering affordable, reliable freelance experts for 15 years. We have provided BPO services to over 120 businesses globally and created over 2,000 high-paying freelance expert positions.

We take the acquisition of new STAFFVIRTUAL employees seriously. We use an extensive experience and expertise interview and background process to vet new candidates for our team so that the employees we provide are capable of handling your needs. 

STAFFVIRTUAL’s 24/7 support means you’ll get around-the-clock access to your team. Have an urgent need? That’s not a problem. Need to speak to someone about a project immediately? You have that access. We offer these benefits with all of our Outsourcing Services.

We are also 100% committed to keeping your business’s and your clients’ data safe. We adhere to international data security standards like ISO/IEC 27001:2013. With STAFFVIRTUAL, you’ll get reliability, expertise, security, and a transparent pricing model that ensures you’ll never discover a hidden fee. 

Our clients can attest to the level of professionalism and trust STAFFVIRTUAL can build with your business. Here are just a few.

“STAFFVIRTUAL is so far ahead of the curve when it comes to remote staffing in the Philippines.“

Buckley Barlow – CEO, In The Know

“The cost savings of STAFFVIRTUAL is very dramatic, although I would say it’s not the primary reason. The primary reason we use them is for the quality of the people we get. However, the cost savings are obvious on paper and easy to justify… I think STAFFVIRTUAL works very well for any fast growing company that is looking to expand their core services”

Eric Howard – COO, CM Management

“One of the things I tell Hong Kong entrepreneurs is that we really should take advantage of this great resource. In the Philippines we can double or triple our team for less than half the cost than it would be here in Hong Kong… to be able to count on STAFFVIRTUAL to shorten that to a few days and get a team up and started, it was just the smart thing to do”

Max Armbuster – CEO, TalkPush

STAFFVIRTUAL can do for your business what it has done for countless others; provide an affordable, expert solution to help you expand your business without expanding your costs.

Conclusion

Hiring freelancers and outsourcing business processes are two business models that can save you money and eliminate overhead associated with full-time, in-house employees. Smart business owners who understand the risk versus reward of working with an independent freelancer choose to use a BPO team. Choosing STAFFVIRTUAL to meet your outsourcing needs ensures you get reliable, quality, security-oriented, accountable, and cost-effective employees who are dedicated to helping your business grow. 

Contact us today to learn how STAFFVIRTUAL can help you scale your operations, increase profitability, and produce more for your clients.