Freelancer Is A Thing Of The Past; Virtual Employees Is The Future Trend Of Outsourcing

While the freelancer may have wowed western companies in the initial days of Outsourcing, today, there seems to be a paradigm shift in how small and big businesses wish to outsource. So, rather than the ubiquitous freelancer it is the virtual employee who is turning out to be the future trend in outsourcing.

When outsourcing took off a few years ago, the small and medium sized enterprises could afford only the freelancer. One, there was no other option, and two, they simply did not have the means or the resources and manpower to physically set up offshore offices in foreign countries unlike the multinationals and big corporations.

However, contracting a freelancer meant that while costs were considerably reduced, a freelancer by no means gave any guarantee of the quality of work that they would finally submit. Many an individual business owner or an SME learnt the hard way that hiring a freelancer would always be somewhat of a risky affair, fraught with anticipated as well as unexpected pitfalls.

The growing dissatisfaction with freelancers is the biggest reason why resourceful outsourcing vendors like VirtualEmployee.com came up with the revolutionary concept of the virtual employee. Okay, so just who is a virtual employee?

Simply put, a virtual employee is someone who works full-time for you in a dedicated manner just like any other locally hired employee in your office. The only difference is that they work out the office of the outsourcing vendor situated halfway across the globe.

A virtual employee is a far better option in outsourcing when compared to a freelancer.

1.A freelancer rarely works just for one client at a time and is known to handle multiple projects for several clients simultaneously. They accordingly prioritise their work, based on who pays them the most. A virtual employee, on the other hand, works exclusively for just one client in a full-time and dedicated manner.

2.A freelancer works alone and unsupervised, usually from home, and as such a certain lack of professionalism is inevitable in their dealings with the clients they work for. In contrast, a virtual employee works out of the vendor's proper office and under the supervision of the HR managers who act as a monitoring authority between the client and their employee.

3.A freelancer can be inconsistent in terms of work output on daily basis and their work hours may fluctuate depending on the projects they are handling on any given day or the interruptions they may face in the form of internet connection not working, power breakdowns or the usual interference that is inevitable when one is working from home. A virtual employee is as consistent as any local employee for the simple reason that they work from a proper office and not a home. So, your remote employee will put in the stipulated work hours that were agreed upon – not just on a day or two but each and every day, on a regular basis.

4.A freelancer's references are usually what are provided by the freelancers themselves and dummy profiles and references are not uncommon. The best part of working with a virtual employee is that the client is actively involved in the actual selection and hiring process, finally getting the most suitable candidate.

5.The kind of work that can be outsourced varies enormously between a freelancer and a virtual employee. Only short-term and low priority work gets outsourced to freelancers and purely as a cost-saving exercise. Virtual employees, on the other hand, are a valuable resource and capable of sustaining long-running and essential office operations like software development, PHP programming, content writing and so on.

Virtual employees are the definite future trend of outsourcing because they give total control to their clients.