Pros and Cons of Employing Another Person

Most small businesses in the US have five or fewer people working in them, and a large percentage of small businesses are run by a single person doing their best to try to cover every task required to start and manage a successful business.

The single person set-up might be because they want to keep control over everything. It could also be due to not having a budget to hire others. It might even be due to the fact that there are pros and cons to employing another person. Let’s look at a few of them now.

Pros of Employing Another Person

Hiring a new person on a freelance, part-time or full-time basis gives you an extra pair of hands. It should also give you access to expertise you don’t already have in the company.

For example, most smart small business owners get part-time bookkeeping help rather than try to do this entire important task by themselves. They might also hire freelancers to design logos, work on images using Photoshop, or create PowerPoint presentations. This works out cheaper in terms of both money and time than buying the software and learning it themselves.

When you hire a freelancer, you only have to pay them for the project they are doing. You don’t need to pay a regular salary, benefits and so on, or pay their wages even when times are slow.

Hiring a virtual assistant and skilled freelancers can free up a good deal of the business owner’s time so they can focus on what they love and what they are good at. It is also important to consider that no business owner will ever be able to earn $100 per hour if they are doing menial tasks that are worth only $10 per hour.

More hands means more work getting done. It is really the only way that you will ever be able to grow your business successfully.

Cons of Employing Another Person

The biggest drawback is finding and recruiting talent. Not everyone is honest on their resume. Someone might also call themselves a Photoshop expert, but not be anywhere near as skilled as other vendors online. It can also be tough to find reliable people who will do what they say and meet all their deadlines.

The better and more experienced the worker, the more expensive they will usually be. Recruitment may be ongoing as workers let you down or you decide to get rid of them because they are not living up to your expectations.

Training them will take time, as will supervising and managing them in order to keep the work going smoothly. You also have to be security conscious and try not to give away any passwords or other sensitive information which they could use to harm your business or even steal your entire WordPress blog.

Hiring part-time or full-time workers is a big commitment with legal implications, especially if things don’t work out. You can be accused of unfair dismissal, or worse, if you and your employee/s just don’t click. Outsourcing is a better option, but it might mean more turnover of workers and therefore more training that will be wasted as people come and go.