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Hiring from Remote Work Agency vs via Freelancing Website

Hiring freelancers or dedicated employees via a remote work agency could confuse any business owner aspiring to hire remote staff. Let’s melt your doubts.

With the rapid growth of industries worldwide, having people working from outside our office premises has become the new normal. Business owners from around the world are embracing the trend to outsource and freelance work, slowly and steadily. Not just start-ups or short-staffed firms, but well-established businesses today also seem curious to explore options beyond in-house staff, and hire remote staff in India.

Outsourcing is quickly gaining traction as it offers smoother hiring and work experience. After deciding on the type of virtual assistants that you need to fulfil your business requirements, you may proceed in two main ways – either reach out to a trusted remote working agency in India or sign up on a freelancing website as an employer. Hiring remote workers using a freelancing website doesn’t involve any expenditure, and offers you a plethora of options of skilled candidates to choose from.

Investing in these different third-party services has its own advantages, which you need to understand in detail to make an informed decision. Both these remote working models have some common features and some common benefits. If you are planning to hire remote staff but are confused between choosing freelancers and dedicated employees (hired via an outsourcing service provider), read on. Let’s assess how different or similar these two remote staffing models are on basic hiring parameters!

Onboarding Process

The course of managing remote work could become quite demanding and challenging. It’s true that the onboarding process for remote employees is simpler and cheaper than it is for in-house or local employees. If you are hiring remote workers, you wouldn’t be required to invest in additional office space, IT equipment, and employee benefits.

Freelancers have the freedom of working from anywhere – even their bedside table. And while this might sound like a dream situation for many of us to be in, the determination and focus required to cope with frequent distractions (while working from home) is difficult to sustain for long. So, freelancers need to stick to a proper working schedule with the same amount of dedication and discipline as they would while working in a conventional office setting. If they don’t, clients who sought these freelancers’ services could be left feeling cheated with substandard work or missed deadlines.

On the other hand, hiring via a remote working agency in India seems a safer business call. These agencies invest a lot of time and money in training their workforce. Their dedicated virtual employees work under the stringent supervision of experienced managers, who are adept at delivering quality work in quick turnaround time without letting any cultural differences meddle in the work process.

Statutory Regulations

The process of hiring remote workers could be full of logistical headaches. You are hiring resources from the other side of the world and complying with their native country’s taxation and social security system procedures are very important.

Otherwise, the entire purpose of outsourcing could be defeated, which is saving time for core business activities. This implies that if you do not move ahead thoroughly considering these challenges, you might end up spending the saved time-fighting your way out of complicated legal situations.

Before you go on to hire remote staff in India, try wrapping your head around the country’s labyrinthine tax laws, bureaucratic red tape, and time zone issues. There are a number of freelancers and remote workers who do not seek the employment benefits laid down by the country’s employment regulations, and hence do not comply with them.

A freelancing website simply connects employers with freelancers and vice-versa. However, if you are hiring via a trusted remote working agency in India, you don’t need to bother about the hassles of complying with the country’s laws and regulations. Present-day outsourcing service providers in the market are fully acquainted with these rules to avoid any blunders down the road.

Work Quality

It’s indeed true that the whole idea of outsourcing to more affordable countries was aimed at saving operational costs. But in the fast-paced times of today, business owners want the best of both the worlds – budget-friendly resources and high-quality work. In fact, they are more focused on quality than quantity. So, before hiring remote workers from abroad, you must feel assured about getting a high quality of service.

As far as the process of hiring through freelancing websites is concerned, it is difficult to conduct their background checks thoroughly. You might be able to see impressive professional information about freelancers (like their IQ exam scans or copies of government-issued IDs) uploaded on such websites, but there is practically no reliable way to cross-check these details.

However, if you are hiring from a well-known remote working agency in India, rest assured about the validity of your dedicated virtual employees’ professional qualifications. The profiles you get to choose from through this platform are properly scrutinised. The resources have proven capabilities in ‘under-promising and over-delivering’. These agencies are very particular about their rapport in the outsourcing market, and hire resources only after verifying their organisational experience and educational merits. Their performance is continuously monitored and improved to meet international quality standards.

Company Policies

Having a strong corporate structure and clearly defined policies in place is a must for your organisation’s growth, especially if you are keen to hire remote staff in India. Based on your individual business objectives, you could formulate policies like the number of work hours, flexibility of shift timings, regular report submissions, and attendance in team meetings.

If you are working with freelancers, defining an effective communication and compliance monitoring system could be a challenging process. There’s no third party involved, so you are mostly on your own in terms of monitoring your remote workforce’s performance. This might be an overwhelming procedure, especially for startup business owners.

In case you are hiring remote workers through a trusted agency, the chances of the agency’s having already established universally acceptable policies are much higher. Its dedicated virtual employees are experienced in using advanced tools like activity tracking software to spare you the hassles of micromanagement.

Organised Compensation Process

After all, we are here to pay bills. An unclear compensation process could leave your remote employees feeling undervalued and overworked. As a result, retaining them could gradually become difficult. So, a business owner aspiring to hire remote staff in India must set up a transparent and efficient compensation process.

Hiring from a freelancing website offers you the leverage of using popular payment channels like PayPal and Transferwise to credit your freelancers’ salary in a hassle-free manner. Just like your in-house employees, paying your remote workers regularly for their work without any delay would enhance their productivity and loyalty towards achieving your organisational objectives.

But if you hire remote workers through a remote working agency in India, work pressure on the payday would be as light as any other day. You wouldn’t be required to find out each remote team member’s banking details and credit their salaries individually. Here, the agency would be responsible to pay salaries to your dedicated remote workers on time, carefully considering various factors like banking holidays and currency fluctuations.

Customer Service

So, you finally decide to take a leap of faith and hire remote staff in India, hoping to get quality personalised customer service (as mentioned on the website of every freelancing portal or remote work agency). Imagine a situation when you are not happy or satisfied with the work of your remote workers. What would you do next?

As we have already mentioned, you are almost on your own with freelancers. The move might work wonders or prove disastrous, and you have no control over luck. All you could do is choose freelancers with a commendable track record, but again, there would be nobody else to turn to for help in resolving any work-related issues.

A remote working agency certainly gives you greater peace of mind. Getting a personal client relationship manager or a customer success officer is probably the biggest advantage of hiring via a remote working agency in India. This is the person responsible for addressing all your concerns related to remote work and team monitoring compliance.

Wrapping Up

One of the key reasons for any business owner to choose outsourcing is cost-effectiveness. But when the question of hiring remote workers from a freelancing website or a remote work agency pops up, they often make the mistake of going ahead with freelancers as hiring dedicated virtual employees is costlier. Working with freelancers is definitely not a bad idea, but it shifts a major part of control over the work process to their hands. Plus, you’d never know how many clients your hired freelancer is working for, which might adversely affect the attention he or she would be giving to your critical projects.

So, remember that you get what you pay for. If getting better value for your money is what you are targeting, get in touch with a remote work agency today and get high work quality, affordable service cost and peace of mind.

Written By

I am John Tie working as a Digital Marketer and content strategist with www.virtualemployee.com, one of the leading Outsourcing Company. With extensive experience, I have authored several dozen articles on topics related to outsourcing, software development, graphic designing and much more.

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