SMEs Should Hire Virtual Employees Instead Of Offshore Freelancers when Outsourcing

The dynamics of outsourcing differs considerably when it comes to MNCs (multinational corporations) and SMEs (small to medium enterprises). MNCs, with large budgets and resources, are in a position to partner with large outsourcing service providers and, in turn, open their offshore offices in countries like India. For obvious reasons, SMEs cannot do the same and, subsequently, many SMEs reduce costs by hiring offshore freelancers.

For short term, low budget and low level priority work hiring an offshore freelancer for a one-off project makes perfect sense. The risk is minimal, the cost is low and the work is not of the highest priority. If hiring a freelancer does not work out the client has not lost much nor potentially jeopardized their business. So, provided the freelancer delivers the desired result in a timely manner a client can make significant savings. In this respect, offshore freelancing does have a credible and important market to serve.

However, due to a lack of options and in an attempt to keep costs low, SMEs often also hire offshore freelancers for long-term projects and for work which is at the very core of the company's business itself. Which is essentially hiring an offshore freelancer to work as a full time, dedicated employee, albeit remotely.

Hiring a freelancer who is working with multiple clients, unsupervised from home and with limited resources is obviously not ideal for such a purpose. SMEs are conned into this situation because there is no other alternative or method by which they can hire dedicated, full time employees in a foreign country. As a result, even for important and long term work SMEs are forced to fall back on and hire offshore freelancers in an attempt to keep costs low. In this respect, offshore freelancers are unable to provide the solution SMEs looking to outsource require.

Some of the main shortcomings of outsourcing with offshore freelancers and why they are unsuitable to work for clients on a long term basis as dedicated employees include:

• Priority: Offshore freelancers work for numerous clients simultaneously and prioritize their work in accordance with the highest paying client.
• Consistency/Dependability: Most offshore freelancers are unreliable; they may be present one day and not another. Furthermore, the working hours of offshore freelancers are not fixed.
• Dedication: Offshore freelancers are not dedicated to your work because you are not their sole source of income nor are you legally committed to being a consistent or long term source of income. An offshore freelancer will thus never be 100% dedicated to your work like a full time employee.
• Short term solution: Hiring a freelancer is a completely unregulated process. Companies are completely at the mercy of the freelancer, and should something go wrong there is no one to turn to.
• Professionalism: Hiring a freelancer is a completely unregulated process. Companies are completely at the mercy of the freelancer, and should something go wrong there is no one to turn to.
• Supervision and management: Offshore freelancers work independently and so there is no physical supervision or management.
• Dummy offshore freelancers: The rating or feedback of many offshore freelancers is often untrue, with many offshore freelancers purchasing other freelancers' profiles in an attempt to win contracts. How do you know your offshore freelancer is really as good as they say they are?
• Collaboration/Interaction: Offshore freelancers work independently and in their own time zones. Collaboration and interaction is thus to a minimum especially when your offshore freelancer is situated half way around the world.
• Infrastructure/Hardware: Does your offshore freelancer have the infrastructure and hardware to work efficiently and work remotely and closely with you? Probably not.
• Confidentiality: You outsource to a completely unknown entity and this can jeopardize the confidentiality of any of your sensitive data.
• Trust: You outsource to an individual and not a reputable company. A breach of trust is easier with the first option.

In summary, whilst offshore freelancers might be highly skilled and might lower your cost, hiring an offshore freelancer is likely to be a highly inefficient and time consuming process if they are hired on a long term basis. Unable to communicate and collaborate with your freelancer, not knowing if they will be working from one day to the next, unsure about the freelancer's commitment and continuously searching for new freelancers results in so much inefficiency that it outweighs the benefits one gains in cost reduction.

Virtual Employees the natural answer to the SME outsourcing demand

Efficiency is the key to successfully outsourcing and now SMEs have an alternative option by way of hiring Virtual Employees for their long term outsourcing requirements. A Virtual Employee is first and foremost an employee not a freelancer. And thus with a Virtual Employee, you get the reliability, stability and the consistency you would with hiring any local employee. Furthermore, your Virtual Employee works only for you and so you get the priority and dedication your work deserves. Additionally, you can work with the same employee every day, have the employee work the same hours as you and have high levels of collaboration and interaction with your employee. Lastly, when you hire a Virtual Employee the employment is completely regulated. Your employee works from VirtualEmployee.com's office where they are managed and supervised at all times by mangers and HR executives in an office equipped with the latest hardware and infrastructure. The managers and HR executives act as physical on site representatives of the client, managing the client's employee on their behalf and working with the client to manage the employee as per the client's instructions. Furthermore, because VirtualEmployee.com's dedicated recruitment department takes care of the entire recruitment process you can be confident of your employees' said level of expertise.

In short, with VirtualEmployee.com clients, firstly, have a dedicated, full time employee and, secondly, their employee works from an offshore office which acts as a subsidiary and extension of their local office. Outsourcing valuable, long term projects is therefore a lot more practical and effective with a Virtual Employee as opposed to an offshore freelancer and herein is why clients should hire a VE over a freelancer. The efficiency and dependability Virtual Employees bring, in addition to significant cost reduction, is why SMEs are turning to Virtual Employees and not offshore freelancers in increasing numbers.