The current coronavirus pandemic has not only brought an unprecedented global health crisis but has also hit the global economy in a drastic way, putting a full halt to several economic sectors. Given the current climate, the overwhelming majority of companies are significantly reducing their operating costs and have frozen their recruitment. Therefore, they must operate with the preexisting resources and the skills that they managed to develop and accumulate internally during the past years, which is virtually impossible for the vast majority of companies.
If there is one thing that the coronavirus pandemic is showing, it is that Freelancers and independent professionals stand at the forefront of the economic recovery. In times such as the ones we are currently living, working with Freelancers can not only assure the continuity of your business operations, but can also provide you with opportunities to grow. Freelance workforce has many advantages and allow companies of all sizes access world-class talents, a high-level of expertise and the most in-demand skills at a fraction of the cost of hiring full-time employees or using consulting companies and agencies.
Freelancing is a growing trend
According to the research conducted by SD Worx and Antwerp Management School in 2018, 38.5% of Belgian companies use external independent professionals on a regular basis. According to the same study, Freelancers already represent an average of 10% of the workforce within Belgian companies. Freelancers are being used by businesses of all sizes, from one person companies, startups and scale-ups to small and medium-sized enterprises and large corporations. What is even more astonishing is that even the Big 4 firms, agencies and consulting companies tap into the Freelance talent pool to place them at clients as their own consultants. Could there possibly be a better sign of recognition?
This trend keeps only growing. It is being observed that more and more young highly educated professionals with in-demand skillsets quit their full-time positions to become freelancers. Similarly, highly ambitious and entrepreneurial specialists with decades of professional experience, that were already at the roots of this movement in Belgium, reinforce this trend even further. This brand-new segment of the labor market is an affordable gold mine of expertise and skills. Freelancing is no longer seen as a supplement income for full-time jobs, but rather as a wise career choice to gain more independence, earn a better living and acquire more expertise.
Freelancers offer a much-needed flexibility and cost-efficiency
To understand the whole potential of working with Freelancers we need to draw a parallel with consulting services. Similarly to consultants, Freelancers go from one client to another, have a deep overview of what is happening within various industries and implement the best practices. However, unlike consultants they are self-employed, are more independent, and gain more responsibilities and knowledge than their corporate counterparts that are being systematically restrained by their management and corporate hierarchy.
Moreover, Freelancers must continuously get out of their comfort zone, learn and acquire new skills to remain competitive on the market. On top of that, they are just as flexible as any other service vendor company, if not even more. You can hire Freelancers for something very specific such as a website development, a marketing campaign, a graphic design, or for a long-term assignment to support your companies and your employees on a daily basis.
Furthermore, Freelancers are substantially more cost-efficient, since they don’t have the same bulky cost structure as traditional service providers and therefore, don’t request the same ridiculously high mark-ups as agencies do. By using Freelance services, you simply remove all the unnecessary intermediaries and work directly with the executer.
And why not partially or fully outsource some aspects of your business to freelancers?
Expert skills are extremely scarce on the Belgian labor market and not each company can afford a high-level expertise. It takes a lot of budget, time and efforts to gather good team members and even more to train and retain them. Despite that, businesses need very diverse profiles to operate your business in the most efficient way. You need a solid sales department, digital marketers, graphic designers, IT, developers, copywriters, administrative workers and finance experts. Most businesses, however, don’t need them on a permanent basis. Sometimes you have enough work to execute for 1 month a year, sometimes for 2 weeks and thus it becomes completely pointless to recruit full-time employees on a regular basis. That’s where Freelancing becomes a lifeline for most businesses.
Freelancing allows companies of all sizes gain the same operational excellence and the same level of expertise as large corporations, thanks to external Freelance expert teams. Imagine a small brick and mortar store in Belgium. All the operational endeavors, such as strategy, finance, marketing, social media, website, HR and administration depended on the owner. Today, with a very reasonable and well targeted budget, the shop owner can hire a Freelance digital marketing expert, a web developer, a copywriter and even a supply chain consultant for 1-2 days a week or a month each. Thanks to Freelancers, even a small shop can gain the same expertise as a large international retail group.
How i-Lance helps you recruit Freelancers?
The big advantage of working on i-Lance, is that our platform for the referencing and recruitment of Freelancers in Belgium is the most transparent, flexible and economical on the market. It is fully self-serviced and simply lets you do your recruitment without any external market frictions or middlemen. We remove all the unnecessary intermediaries and put you and your hiring managers in direct contact with our pool of over 4,200 registered Freelancer profiles. Furthermore, we don’t charge any commissions, don’t tell you who you should hire and leave you the full freedom of picking the best candidate from all the available profiles. Finally, each posted job offer gets systematically advertised among our users and through our social media channels. Finding and hiring the perfect Freelancer has never been that easy.
