Today’s technology has made telecommuting possible. Companies like Amazon hire employees who work from the comfort of their own homes. Technology has also made it possible for an employer to access talent from practically anywhere in the world. Today you can work for a corporation that is on the other side of the world. SME’s find it easy to work with freelancers as they offer more value than the conventional employee. For example in the U.S. freelancers comprise of 34% of the workforce and this number is projected to grow in the years to come.
AGILITY
Today many SMEs are keen to become agile. They want to implement changes faster. They want to easily increase or reduce the size of their workforce depending on their immediate needs. They want affordable access to a varied talent pool. Agility makes it easy to survive dry seasons when there is little business. Agility is the ability to quickly rise to the occasion when a business opportunity arises. SMEs can try out someone they are not completely sure about because it will not be costly to fire them in case they are not worth it. They can take on more clients without running themselves ragged. They can reach people in different time zones easily. This agility gives SMEs time to grow and to keep their clients and investors happy at the same time.
CONTROL
Today’s employee wants more control of their career. They may want to work while travelling or work from home. They want to be free to take on the jobs they want and leave out the jobs they do not want. People realise that the days of permanent and personable jobs are long gone. They, therefore, desire to have greater control of their careers. They desire a better work life balance and a greater sense of purpose. Today’s worker wants to design the life he wants. He wants his job to fit into his lifestyle and not the other way around.
TRAINING IS MINIMAL
To avoid incurring the cost of training employees, employers can simply hire a global freelancer. Training is expensive and it will not impart the benefit of experience on the trainee. Freelancers take responsibility for their own personal development. They take it upon themselves to learn things by taking courses and by doing them practically. It is a win-win situation since freelancers will only learn the things that they enjoy doing and want to learn. They will not be fired to train in something they hate doing. Clients, on the other hand, will benefit from hiring people who already know what they are doing and will just hit the ground running.
GLOBAL TALENT POOL
With access to a global talent pool, SMEs can potentially access better talent. They can hire people who possess a more specialised set of skills. When hiring a market research specialist, you can get one who is experienced in your specific field of business. Recruiters are increasingly finding it difficult to get people with skills set for a job. This difficulty can easily be bypassed by hiring freelancers.
A global talent pool means a greater ability to understand the markets that you want to access. SMEs can effortlessly access different markets by hiring freelancers from there to gather intelligence and prospect.
COST EFFECTIVE
A freelancer takes on a specific role. They do not take a job in the traditional sense of the word. They go from project to project. This means that SMEs only pay for work done. Since a freelancer bills their clients for work done and not necessarily time worked; they have no incentive to waste your time. SMEs also save money they would have spent on office space, software, and other fixed costs.
DIVERSITY
Research has shown that diverse teams perform much better than teams that lack diversity. They have different ideas and different solutions to problems. They have different perspectives about the world and how it works. Companies that work with more diverse teams also make more money. And they make more money because they are smarter and more creative.
Research has shown that people tend to be more complacent when they are working with teammates who are from the same group as them. When a team becomes more diverse, the members become more uncomfortable but they also perform better. In other words, it is the kind of discomfort that you want. What it takes is for the manager to minimise friction better between team members.
