When it comes to starting your own business, you’ll likely eventually need other people to do work for you. Instead of hiring employees, you might consider finding contractors to outsource your work to. This will not only save you money, it has a lot of other benefits as well.

When you hire your own employees, you have to pay a lot more than just their salary. Employers have to pay employee benefits like health and accident insurance, paid vacation, social security, and other additional expenses. While most of these are small costs, over time they add up to quite a bit of money out of your pocket. If you hire contractors instead of employees, they pay for their own benefits, so you don’t have to worry about the expenses. The only downside is that, because they incur these expenses themselves, they generally add these expenses into their fees.

In addition to paying for benefits for your employees, you also pay for training. Even if someone comes into your business with experience, they still don’t usually know exactly how your business works and it takes time for you to get them up to speed. If there is a new program or style you want them to use, you need to train them on it. A contractor does their own training so you don’t have to worry about it. Plus, if you don’t like the quality of work you’re getting from a contractor, you can just get a new one. When you get a new employee, you have to go through the hassle and expense of training a whole new person.

Another financial benefit to hiring contractors is that you only pay them when they work, and they only work when you have business, and therefore profits. If you lose a client or have less work to go around, you can simply stop using a contractor. If someone is your employee, you either have to pay them even though they don’t have work to do, or lay them off, which is a financial drain as well.

Contracting out work decreases your overhead costs in addition to not having to pay salaries. Keeping employees also requires you to have a place for them to work. This includes the costs of owning or renting space, computers and other equipment for them to work on, office supplies, bathrooms, and a whole slew of other things required to run an office, all of which cost you money. You can avoid all these costs when you hire out work; however, remember that contractors factor this into their charges. At the same time, you avoid these costs altogether when work is slow.

While outsourcing is a great way to save money, it has other positives. Outsourcing helps your reduce your business risk. Since you’re not obligated to hire anyone when you don’t have business, you can procect yourself in case of hard times. It’s easy to lean down your business and survive until work picks up again. Outsourcing also adds a degree of flexibility to your business. If you decide to head in a different direction with your work, you can simply hire new contractors instead of retraining employees. This lets you be adaptable and makes you much more likely to survive and turn a profit.

Outsourcing can be a great way to expand your workforce without breaking the bank.