When to Use the Gig Economy VS. Hire Employees

Businesses have plenty of options when it comes to staffing. Out of the various choices available, hiring full-time employees and hiring gig workers are the two most prominent options. There is no need to elaborate on full-time employees as it is the default and usually the only used option. As for the gig workers- they are freelancers, contract-based or temporary workers hired by companies. To know more about them refer to our “Gig Economy: Unlocking New Opportunities for Small Businesses” blog post.

To make it easier for you, we compared a few aspects between hiring gig workers and full-time employees and marked the winner of the scuffle.

Cost: Gig Economy

The biggest perk in hiring Gig workers is their cost-effectiveness. They are more cost-effective than full-time employees. You only pay for the work they do, and don’t have to pay for providing any additional benefits to them. Therefore all expenses associated with hiring full-time employees like taxes are eliminated.

Flexibility: Gig Economy

With the help of the Gig economy, you can be very flexible with your staffing needs, as you can hire when needed, allowing your business to function optimally. With full-time employees, you won’t be able to scale up or down immediately.

Risk: Gig Economy

You will never have to worry about layoffs or other HR-related issues when you are dealing with Gig workers. But this is not the same in the case of full-time employees as there are legal obligations to be dealt with.

Control: Full-time Employees

Full-time employees allow you more control than Gig workers. This is an important factor when you are on working on projects where coordination is crucial. It also allows you to provide feedback and train your employees to extract the best out of them.

Availability: Full-time Employees

The heading should be pretty self-explanatory. Gig workers might not be available when you need them, but that is not the case with your regular employees. Full-time employees are always at your disposal which is very important when dealing with tight deadlines.

Commitment: Full-time Employees

Full-time employees are usually more committed to your company. As for Gig workers, they are not obligated to your company and have no commitments. So you never know when they will jump the ship.

Collaboration: Full-time Employees

There’s a very high level of collaboration between your employees as they often or always work together. But this is not the case with Gig workers, it would be considerably harder to collaborate with them. This could jeopardize projects requiring a high level of collaboration.

Based on your needs and the project requirements you should be able to easily pick between hiring Gig workers and Full-time employees. If you have an important project that requires good collaboration, and commitment then full-time employees should be your go-to choice. You can hire Gig workers to work on projects on the back burner or the ones that aren’t too pressing at the moment. Weigh the pros and cons and go for the optimal option.