Posted by If you are thinking of starting starting your own small business, with a bit of luck, you will soon be needing some help! You’ll need other people to help you and do work for you. You obviously want to try and avoid the cost and headache of hiring your own employees. So what can you do? Well a great way to get the help you need at a lower cost is to outsource your small business tasks. You will not only save money – there’s a whole load of other benefits to outsourcing for a small business.
When you hire your own employees, you have to pay a lot more than just their salary. Employers have to pay employee benefits like health and accident insurance, paid vacation, social security, and other additional expenses. While most of these are small costs, over time they add up to quite a bit of money out of your pocket. If you outsource some of the work you have and hire contractors instead of employees, they pay for their own benefits, so you don’t have to worry about the expenses. As with everything, it has its downside in that they generally add these expenses to their fees to cover the costs!
In addition to paying for benefits for your employees, you also pay for training. Even if someone comes into your business with experience, they still don’t usually know exactly how your business works and it takes time for you to get them up to speed. If there is a new program or style you want them to use, you need to train them on it. A contractor does their own training so you don’t have to worry about it. Plus, if you don’t like the quality of work you’re getting from a contractor, you can just get a new one. When you get a new employee, you have to go through the hassle and expense of training a whole new person.
Another financial benefit to outsourcing is that you only pay when you have work to carry out. If you lose a client or have less work to go around, you can simply reduce the level of outsourcing and use less contractors. If someone is your employee, you either have to pay them even though they don’t have work to do, or lay them off, which is a financial drain too!
Another reason to outsource is that your overhead costs are lower – in addition to not having to pay salaries. If you have employees on your payroll, you have to have somewhere for them to work. So you have the costs of owning or renting space, computers and other equipment for them to work on, office supplies, bathrooms, and a whole slew of other things required to run an office, all of which cost you a fortune. All these costs can be avoided through outsourcing.
While outsourcing is a great way to save money, it has other positives. Outsourcing helps your reduce your business risk. Since you’re under no obligation to hire staff when business is poor, when hard times come, you are protected. It’s easy to lean down your business and survive until work picks up again. Outsourcing also adds a degree of flexibility to your business. If you decide to head in a different direction with your work, you can simply hire new contractors instead of retraining employees. This lets you be adaptable and makes you much more likely to survive and turn a profit.
Outsourcing is a great opportunity for today’s small business owner as it provides a simple and effective way to expand your workforce without breaking the bank.
If you would like more in depth information about how to outsource, check out this great resource for learning all there is to know about outsourcing. Its mainly focused on helping online businesses with their outsourcing needs but can be applied to other businesses too. Its a great course by Jimmy D Brown and Nicole Dean called OutsourceWeekly.com. Check it out here!