The benefits of freelancing, either independently or in an agency setting, for professionals have been well established. Greater flexibility and control over schedules, the ability to balance other life priorities such as child or elder care, significant hobbies, side ventures and working around a disability feature highly. Location independence and the ability to live in a less populated area, closer to family or in an area that is healthier, more appealing, less expensive or otherwise of interest also feature highly.
However, the many benefits of using remote workers, freelancers or contract employees are less frequently covered for business owners. The freelance agency in particular can transform a business and open up opportunities that might not otherwise be available, at least at an emergent or early-growth stage of business.
In fact, many of the benefits of freelancing to professionals turn out also to be benefits to businesses when looked at from the opposite angle. A freelancing agency gives you greater scheduling flexibility as the business owner than traditional employment structures. You can have professionals in other time zones responding to customer needs, rather than paying extra for overtime or shift work on site. You can schedule round-the-clock service, if need be. Weekend and holiday employment become less of a challenge.
You also gain the ability to respond to surging or ebbing work demand more effectively. An agency, more so than an independent freelancer, can quickly mobilize additional workers for you if your business hits a busy stretch or is growing rapidly. You spend less time and money on HR or recruitment firms to track down new staff during an already busy time. During a slowdown, it’s easy to cut back service levels as needed so that you’re not stuck maintaining overhead costs during times of reduced income.
Freelance agencies also offer a greater depth of expertise than individual contractors or traditional employees. Especially in small businesses, there’s often pressure for one person to wear many hats and serve areas of business in which they are less experienced or suited for in order to fill out their hours and meet the business’s needs. With freelance agencies, you can access much more specialized professionals with more experience and pay them only for the work they do in the areas they excel in, rather than paying them for full-time hours and cramming unrelated tasks into their job description.
Freelance agencies add convenience in other ways. You can reduce the management stress and overhead of keeping the details and communication straight between multiple parties by working with a single or a selection of agencies. This increases efficiency across many areas of your business, including contracts, payments, taxation, collaboration and coordination of staff, projects or services, and adding or removing members from the team.
A freelance management agency can be a good way to apply this kind of efficiency across multiple freelance agencies (for example, if you use one agency for virtual assistants, one for PR and marketing, and another for specialized online services such as coding, software programming or web design). It also works with individual freelancers or contractors, smoothing the process and reducing effort. An umbrella company adds a sort of “safety net” between an employer and the freelance professionals or agencies by dealing with paperwork such as contract agreements and guarantees, tax regulation, contractor pay and otherwise securing and consolidating the business owner’s interests.
Using a freelance management agency and freelance agencies or individual professionals makes it possible to run a much larger, more capable company than traditional forms of business. You need less real estate and carry less physical overhead costs such as office space, office furniture, equipment and supplies. Your need for in-house staff such as human resources and payroll professionals can be drastically reduced. Your capacity to take on work, including expanding into specialist areas, is dramatically increased and no longer bound to your in-house talent and experience. You also get to work with engaged, motivated specialists who are able to dig into the area they are most interested in and talented at in a way that suits their lifestyle, which resolves many of the interpersonal issues and employee frustrations endemic to the traditional workplace.
Freelancing agencies could transform your business. Use them to fill gaps, meet deadlines, expand expertise, extend hours of service and reduce overheads. Work with a freelance management agency to further optimize your business by consolidating the portion of your business that involves freelancers, improve your efficiency, and reduce risk.
