It has been a super-busy week for new contracts, new writers, placements and deadlines (not to mention the summer camp that is currently taking place in my house, but that’s another whole story). So you’ll please forgive me for not posting this sooner. And now, without further delay, welcome to Part 3 on why it pays to outsource.
In Part 2, I made the following claim: “Outsourcers appreciate the flexibility that their work provides, and they don’t expect the usual perks of full-time employees such as lunch, travel or paid leave.”
A member of my Documentation and Technical Writing Management group on LinkedIn commented in response, “…outsourcing doesn't make the burden of ‘perks’ vanish, though it might seem that way. The burden is simply transferred to a vendor, who, in turn, will surely factor the perks into the billing rate.”
Kumar, I would suggest that if you are paying the same or more for your outsourcer as you would for an in-house writer of the same caliber, then it’s time to start looking for a new outsourcing company. In Israel, where most of our writers are located, employers pay a base salary plus an additional 37% for social benefits. Without going into all the math, it should suffice to say that my hourly rate doesn’t even come close.
Besides the hourly rate differential, there’s also the workload that must be considered. Many companies don’t analyze metrics and they don’t really understand how much work they have. What they do see is that there is writing work to be done and so they hire someone. But the reality is that at times there is too much work for one writer and at other times there is no work at all. The average workload over the course of the year might be 40 hours per week, but what if that’s derived from averaging 80 hour weeks with zero hour weeks? This is obviously not ideal for a full-time writer, or any writer for that matter. What they really needed was two outsourcers when the workload was heavy and none when there wasn’t any work. Take that same concept and apply it to a different scenario:
A hardware/software company decides they have enough steady work to justify hiring a full-time technical writer. The bulk of the work is on the hardware side so they hire a writer with a strong background in hardware for the job. But when it comes to software, he is really clueless and the software documentation is sub-par. What they really needed was two part-time writers, one for the hardware and one for the software.
In essence, a good outsourcing company will help you analyze your needs and will enter into a long-term relationship with both their clients and their writers. They will be more than a writer referral service – they will make sure they provide you with writers who have the experience and technical knowledge you need. They will assign a writer for the duration of your project and send that same writer back to you for future releases and updates. And during crunch times, they will give you the extra personnel you need to make your deadline. They will float writers between projects as needed so you don’t waste valuable staff time and budget. With good outsourcing, you pay for what you get and not what you don’t.
To find out if outsourcing is right for your company, contact me for a free consultation.
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Miriam Lottner, CEO of Tech-Tav, is a “single sorceress” and technical documentation innovator whose professional passion is helping her
Wow, lots of comments here.
Thanks for your input people.
For lots of reasons-including that there are plenty of TWs in China and India willing and happy to work for $10.00USD per hour or less, outsourcing is in many cases an absolute business advantage-but that does not mean that writers will be paid more than an in-house writer would because of the business case/advantage.
I too wish we lived in an ideal world where this was true, but we just don't.
Sadly, many companies don't understand that by allowing people to be in-house employees, but also giving them flex time or telecommuting options, they could get the best of both worlds. The sad truth is though, that most still don't! So they lose out on the opportunity to hire people like mom's with young kids, or people who don't want to commute for 3-4 hours a day etc. Dumb IMHO, but it is just the way it is.
To the blog visitor who thinks that the only thing a person gets from working for a company like Tech-Tav is the benefit of not taking risk-I have to disagree. Well, I have to disagree at least for Tech-Tav. I can't speak for other outsourcing companies, but Tech-Tav provides our writers with a lot more than just that and in addition, the percentage paid for those benefits (of not being a stand alone freelancer) is pretty small compared with other comparable companies and industries doing the same thing.
We all have something to learn from the world economy of the last few years. Business is going to continue to evolve and change and being in a global economy makes that more of a challenge. I know of top notch native English speaking, well trained Tech Writers in NYC where once you could not find a writer for $100USD that have not been able to find any job for many months. The days of having your entire work career at one or maybe two different companies are over. Employees are moving around fast and staying in one place for even 36 months is now considered "old fashioned". Hard to believe we have been working for some of the same customers-with the same writers for 15 years!
There are lots of other benefits I could list for outsourcing, but the bottom line is, that it has to work for both sides.
For outourcing to work as a long term and benefit driven solution, it has to be something that is worth it for the writer and good for the company. As the outsourcing company providing the service to both sides of the equiation, I consider that difficult part of the balancing act as an integral part of my job.
Tech-Tav is proud that more than 1/3 of our entire staff has been with our company for at least 8 years! Fully 1/4 of the staff have been with us for more than 10 years!
Supply and demand will always determine market prices. Quality and expertise are unfortunately not ususally the deciding facto (although of course they should be a large component).
Have a cool summer and thanks for reading and the feedback!
Miriam
Visitor - There are several reasons why some very good, not novice writers who make great team players work only as external writers and therefore might have to take a lower fee, if that's all that's available. Among the reasons are:
- Location - some writers live in locations where there is not a lot of documentation work available locally and they can't manage a daily commute, or a daily commute would be costly intime and money and therefore purpose-defeating. As external writers, they are usually freer to do some or most or sometimes all of their work remotely.
- Part time - some writers need to work fewer than 9 hours a day, due to family obligations (e.g. mothers of young children) or a desire to have more of a life outside of work. This is more often possible working as an external writer than as an internal writer.
Of course, a company can hire an inhouse writer and allow them all of the above, but for some reason, they are often reluctant to do so. These conditions are more often available through outsourcing companies, if at all.
I'd also like to add that part of what shapes my perspective is that I spent the first nine and a half years of my technical writing career working in the office of an outsourcing company. This meant that I was working alongside other technical writers. The longer I worked in that environment, the more expertise I gained from my coworkers. The pay was the type of pay that motivates an employee to look for another job, but the experience with many kinds of technical writing jobs and the mutual support of a team of writers was on the whole more conducive to learning this profession than learning the ins and outs of any given hit-tec company, or so it seems to me (not that there isn't also what to learn in an inhouse job). It kept our focus on the user perspective and the principles of likely usability of documentation, and we had top notch support intool usage. Ironically, during my time there, mediocre writers who didn't manage to master technical writing skills on the level required at a competitive outsourcing company, and writers who succeeded but had not yet gained a lot of experience, moved onto much more lucrative inhouse jobs.
The agency makes a profit. This profit can be saved by hiring an inhouse writer, provided there is enough continuous work. If the agency gets paid the same or lower than an inhouse writer, it means the external writer gets paid lower than the inhouse writer as some of the payment covers the agency's profit. So why does this external writer accept to work for a lower fee? Mostly because it's the only work he/she can find, because no company would hire this person for a reason, such as not being a team player or being a novice, or because they like to be independent, although some of the independence is imaginary. You can't take your kids to zoo when you have a tight deadline for a customer. Some people prefer to be independent and that is fine, but in that case they should earn more than an inhouse writer, not less. Being independent for an agency is paying them a fee for finding you work and minimizing the risk of not being paid at the end.
I think it is a trade off usually. And that's exactly why I see a problem affecting our profession. It stands to reason that when outsourcing is the best solution for any given company, in terms of getting the best writers on each project and tailored bandwidth for a dynamic workload, that automatically translates to a business advantage for that company even without spending less per hour of work. If the pressure is on to make outsourcing competitive also at the per hour price level, that would seem to create a situation that will ultimately exploit writers, such as a trend towards companies hiring freelancers to work exactly as inhouse writers, demanding that they work fixed fulltime hours in the office, for example. It also means that whichever writers don't have any special reason to need to work flexible hours at a flexible location and need to make a living, are likely to opt for full time inhouse positions, even though that is actually not usually as good for the growth of their professional skills as documentation professionals. So, overall, I wonder if this price advantage really limits the professional talent available in the market. So, what I would like to see is that superior agility and experience as a TW should "pay" for the flexibility often involved in doing outsourced work. If you're right that there's some sort of mathematical trick that puts it all right, then that's another story.
I am not sure of the financial aspects here. (Finance makes my eys glaze over and I don't have any hard facts to provide.) We really need an accountant to join this discussion. Nevertheless, I will throw my 2-agarot into the ring :-).
My impression is that due to the convoluted and very high tax laws here, employers have a LOT of required expenses for their in-house employees that are not relevant for their out-sourced freelancers. This doesn't necessarily mean that the freelancer is losing out. Again, I am not sure of my facts here, but I believe that an employer can pay the freelancer the equivalent of the in-house salary plus something more or less equivalent to the benefits that the in-house employee would 'feel', and still save money over what that freelancer would cost the business as an employee.
Of course, the salary and conditions for the freelance won't be IDENTICAL to the employee salary. There are going to be tradeoffs on both sides.
For example, as a freelancer I don't get any paid vacation days. I get paid by the hour, for whatever hours I choose to work.
This gives me the freedom and flexibility to take a day off and take my kids to the zoo. I 'pay' for that flexibility by not being paid for those hours.
Of course, I would love to get paid for a couple of weeks off and go up North. But I appreciate the fact that I can take time off to sleep late or hang out in town whenever I wish.
The business that hires me saves on the cost of the employee expenses that don't apply to me. I can choose to take a portion of my salary and put it into my personal keren hishtalmut or kupat gemel or whatever the correct term is for a tax-benefited savings account, similar to what an employee would accrue from the employer.
I think that there are trade-offs all around here. From my perspective as a freelancer, the advantages and benefits are really great. I hope (and believe) that the businesses that hire me also feel that way.
And of course, anyone that hires a Tech-Tav writer is getting Superior Value for their Money!!
I am with you on the second part of the argument - about paying for what you need and not for what you don't need. Regarding the earlier point - the fact that your rate doesn't come close to covering the cost of employing an employee, doesn't that imply that the writer is getting a bad deal? You are either employing writers or paying them as independent freelancers. In the former case, you would have to either pay a low salary with benefits, or a normal salary without. In the latter case, the freelancer needs to pay himself the salary and the benefits out of the income. So if you're actually saving the employer money per hour over and above the benefits of only paying for hours used and getting the right person for each project, how is the writer, with all that superior agility and experience, not losing out here? And this is all without considering that you need to make something out of it yourself. You seem to be painting a picture of a win-win solution, but I'm wondering if you've given up on this one aspect of winning in the current market.
I remember when my father first started doing contract work in hi-tec in the UK after years of working as an employee. His daily rate was huge compared to previously because it was understood that contracting involves downtime and contractors expect to be implicitly compensated for that 0 certainly not to take a lower rate than employees. The main advantages to the customer were understood to be the tailored expertise for the task at hand and not having to commit to employing someone long term and full time.
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