Hiring offshore freelancers for your company?

Hiring offshore for your companies is a prevalent practice in the business world. It is a cost-efficient method that provides your company with increased productivity. It is being done for various services in a lot of industries by businesses small and big. There are three main ways that one can go about hiring a remote employee: you can either hire an offshore freelancer, outsource the service, or get an offshore staff. 

Freelancing is a popular trend right now. It is lucrative to a lot of people who, for their reasons, cannot abide by the fixed office routine. It is tempting for companies because it is highly cost-effective. Yet there are certain disadvantages that come along with hiring an offshore freelancer. What may seem like a profitable idea at the beginning might end up heavily costing your company. So, make yourself thoroughly aware of the drawbacks of working with an offshore freelancer.

• Hard to pick the right individual

  The idea of getting access to a global pool of talent is very appealing. When you hire an offshore freelancer, it means you will get your hands on the talent that may not be available to you locally. But this appeal is quickly lost when you need to navigate through various online freelancing platforms and a plethora of applications to find the kind you want to hire. You hire freelancers for a particular project or task. It means they need to be highly skilled in that specific area. Finding the right fit among such large numbers, which are all very unique, is a huge task. You end up spending a lot of time and energy on finding the required individual and even then may end up with a freelancer who may not be as good.

• Lack of communication

  Freelancers are known for working on their own schedule. They have their own fixed hours and may not be available at all times. This has a direct impact on the communication between you and them. You cannot always reach them to get updates about the project or inform them of any changes needed. This communication lag with your offshore freelancer may end up affecting the quality of the end result.

• Not your employee

  Even though you are paying the offshore freelancer to work on your project, they are not your company’s employees. As a result, their dedication to the project will differ. They will not be as invested in the project as an employee would be, who is accountable to you. They may be interested in getting it finished quickly instead of getting it done correctly. The quality of the end product may not be to your satisfaction.

• Juggle multiple clients

  A full-time remote employee is not only dedicated to the work expected of them guaranteeing quality, but they are also loyal to the company they work for, ensuring that the project gets finished in time. The same cannot be expected from an offshore freelancer. Since they get paid per project, it is not out of the ordinary for them to be working on multiple projects for multiple clients. The divided attention and energy between different projects once again can impact the quality of work being done by them. Moreover, this could also prompt them to ditch your project altogether in favor of a higher-paying project. This not only sets you back on your project timeline but also forces you to go through the process of recruiting another freelancer all over again.

• Security risk

  Lastly, there is always the risk of having your confidential information revealed when working with a freelancer. There is not 100% transparency, and you can not monitor them. NDAs do not always cover all possibilities of information leak, and it is a risk that you take when hiring an offshore freelancer.
  So, while a very feasible choice to go for when it is a low budget short term project or a project/service that involves only a single individual, hiring an offshore freelancer for costly or team projects is a bad idea. Despite the assurances, there is simply no guarantee of the quality of the work they will provide. This is not to say that there are no professional freelancers who supply quality work within the deadlines, but those are not easy to come by. Even if you get lucky with one project, you may not have the same luck on the next one. You will have to proceed with caution.