When looking at if you should hire someone in-house (employee) vs outhouse/outsourced (external provider) I think in this day in age outsourced wins by a country mile.
I talk about this in the context of accounting (assuming most of the role is non-core to the business and not client facing).
There are many reasons but here is my top two:
- Experience – When looking at a specialist outsourced provider they are learning skills at a much more rapid rate than an employee. If they have 25 clients, they do a similar service for, that’s 25 times the problems, 25 times the learnings each month. After 12 months they have seen 300 times the month ends of the employee. They can then share this knowledge with your business to add value and solve problems.
- Motivation – Employees have ups and downs, we all do. When outsourcing, they have to deliver month in month out. If they don’t, they can be dropped on the spot. Employment laws do very little for a drop in performance of employees. They are hard to manage. Outsourced providers need you to survive. It is a competitive world; I believe this keeps them more on their toes.
When looking at a role to fill in your business. Ask yourself, would an outsourced provider do a better job?