As the UK’s largest independent stillage manufacturer, we at JS Burgess Engineering know a lot about making stillages – designing, welding, galvanising, finishing and delivering. However, we recognise that whilst we might be some of the UK’s best in terms of creating bespoke stillage solutions, we don’t have all the in-house skills we require in terms of marketing and promotion. As such, we turned to a freelance marketing consultant to help us out!
Here, we list a few of the real benefits of bringing in freelance staff to help with elements of running a business:
- The Cost: Freelancers are generally cheaper than taking on a full time member of staff in the same role, and normally have specialised skills – for instance, you don’t need to think about providing training as these individuals should already know their stuff.
- The Legal: Whilst this wasn’t hugely important for us, for some small businesses taking on another member of staff can mean additional requirements in terms of health and safety considerations. As freelancers are not employees, many of the regulations around this are avoided. Of course, given that we spend our days welding steel stillages in our own factory, we were fairly used to dealing with health and safety – but this might be a consideration for smaller engineering firms.
- The Outsider View: Working with a freelancer can be great in that they are normally someone with no prior contact with the company. Whilst ours made it clear that getting to understand the company was important, he was also keen to suggest where there were things we could change – for instance, updating our website’s structure and design to make it more modern.
- More Flexibility: Working with freelancers allows us a great deal of flexibility. For instance, if we didn’t feel we had any work that was required, we could ask our freelancer not to do anything that month – and unlike salaried staff we wouldn’t be charged!
- Networking: Freelancers quite often work with a range of companies and, whilst not necessary or expected, on occasion we’ve found that introductions can be made. For example, our current freelancer regularly works with our IT management company, and given that our freelancer works on our marketing, this has been a great relationship.
So there we have it, five reasons we at JS Burgess Engineering feel that working with a freelancer can have on your business. We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below!
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