Balancing daunting deadlines, family frenzies, paperwork pandemonium, and squeezing in a social life (much less getting enough sleep) isn’t easy for any career woman or a business owner.  Juggling personal and professional theatres in life presents a slew of challenges. If the daily grind is threatening to crush you into bits, it might be time to get serious about delegating. Thankfully, there are loads of professionals ready and willing to help alleviate your burdens.  Outsourcing is an effective way to make everyday efficient and productive.  Read on for insights about outsourcing your workload so you can focus on the aspects of your business and personal life that matter most.

What Is Outsourcing?

There are some unfortunate assumptions when the term outsourcing comes up in casual conversation. A common understanding about outsourcing pertains to goods or services that are procured from a foreign supplier or service provider. While it’s true that some companies outsource supplies or manufacturers overseas to cut costs, it’s a bit of a misconception because outsourcing isn’t exclusively conducted overseas or out of the country.

In reality, outsourcing is when a businessperson hires an outside professional to take on extra work or handle certain jobs.  These are usually non-essential tasks that are assigned to a third-party worker. The objective of outsourcing is about delegating daily duties or necessary functions to a professional so your time is better spent managing the crucial areas of your business or career. 

What Are the Advantages of Outsourcing?

As mentioned, the most obvious benefit of a third-party employment service or outsourcing is that it frees you up to work on more critical issues in your personal and professional life.  Here are a few more advantages to consider as you weigh the decision to outsource.

Hire an Expert: As a career woman or a business owner, you’re probably wearing all sorts of hats. On Monday you might find yourself launching a marketing campaign and by Friday you could be handling human resource issues.  What’s more, some of these tasks you find yourself performing might not be in your wheelhouse. That means you’re spending a lot of time learning or researching a function when you should be focused on utilizing your core skill set. When you outsource an expert, he or she can manage these areas professionally and perhaps even do it better than you could. Plus, a pro can free up a lot of time you can spend nurturing your business or managing your career.

Affordable Solution: Outsourcing is often cheaper than hiring another employee. Hiring a professional is typically a contract agreement, which means you’re not burdened with paying health insurance, social security, income taxes, keeping track of vacation time, etc. While the upfront cost of a freelancer might seem high, the long-term savings becomes more evident. This is especially true when you factor in the time spent on new employee training versus hiring a pro who should already know the niche for which he or she is hired.

Flexibility: Depending upon what kind of service provider you outsource, there could be a great deal of flexibility involved. For example, a professional web designer hired to optimize your website may agree to work off-peak hours when your website experiences less traffic. When most employees work standard business hours, an outsourced professional might provide flexible work times to accommodate your business goals.

Examples and Types of Outsourcing

If you’re stressed out and overworked, you might also feel overwhelmed or clueless as to what type of help you need.  Here are a few areas popular in the realm of outsourcing that can help you get out from under the piles of work holding you back from being fully productive.

Administrative and Clerical: This area of professional service can range from hiring a temporary expert to create an operations manual, catching up on data entry, or handling a time-consuming side project.  Outsourcing in this industry is typically done when you’re faced with tasks that have to be done, but they never seem to be a priority.  In this scenario, consider hiring through a temporary agency, or contracting a virtual assistant to fill these business needs.

Specialized Functions and Consulting:  This genre encompasses degreed professionals for hire in areas such as accounting, engineering, or legal assisting.  If you find yourself up to your eyeballs in managing your business, yet short on time to file corporate taxes, then outsource a CPA to get the job done for you.  Or perhaps you’re running a busy law practice and it never seems like you have enough in-house staff to handle the workload; that’s the perfect time for finding legal assistants from a virtual staffing service to help with word processing, document drafting, and legal research.

Web Development, Marketing, and Social Media:  According to business marketing statistics, 92% of all business owners believe their website is their biggest tool for presenting and promoting their business. Furthermore, 96% of business people claim that social media yields the best results in their marketing strategy. While that’s all well and good, many business owners or career women are wasting their talents by spending endless hours on website development or social media marketing campaigns. Of all the areas of outsourcing to consider, this field of work is perhaps the most sought after in the business world.

Get More Productive Through Outsourcing

At the end of the day, certain areas of your business or career are taxing, and way too time-consuming. Furthermore, some areas of expertise require a crackerjack to get certain jobs done right.  Save yourself time, money, and stress by hiring an outside professional to handle tasks crucial to the development of your career or business. Doing so will enable you to focus on what you do best and maybe even save your sanity in your busy life.

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