PeoplePerHour.com (http://www.peopleperhour.com/) – Europe’s biggest online business marketplace – today reported a 94 percent increase or more than 15,000 businesses joining the site to outsource work to freelance consultants in the last 12 months.
The latest figures found that there has been an increase of 102 percent of internet companies outsourcing work through PeoplePerHour.com, with further increases in education (170 percent increase), engineering firms (167 percent increase) and entertainment (a 124 percent increase).
The majority of the firms stated that they are now working through PeoplePerHour.com to save money, employing freelance consultants for defined short-term jobs in HR, design, PR and marketing.
An astonishing 91 percent of business respondents reported that the quality of work done by remote workers is as good or better than full-time staff.
According to PeoplePerHour.com founder and CEO Xenios Thrasyvoulou these latest figures show that “the threat of a double-dip recession means that businesses are looking to cut costs wherever they can.
“The increase of nearly 100 percent in businesses joining PeoplePerHour.com is an incredible figure, showing that in the last year when we thought the economy was pulling out of recession, businesses were still taking action to reduce costs.
“Businesses, however, have found many positives working with freelance consultants. They cite high levels of creativity, motivation and a diversity of skills that bring significant added benefits to their businesses.
“The new businesses joining PeoplePerHour.com are clear that they are enjoying a double whammy of reduced costs while employing a more creative and highly skilled workforce,” said Thrasyvoulou.
Case studies:
Emma Combes, London
Emma Combes has benefited from using PeoplePerHour.com after setting up her business Conscious Mama. Her business provides coaching and education to parents, encouraging them to parent effectively and improve their relations with their children.
Not only does using PeoplePerHour.com allow her to work from home and so look after her children. She also uses freelancers on PeoplePerHour.com to cut costs and ensure that she only employs someone as and when she needs too, cutting her employment costs down to a minimum.
“I can know in advance how much I will be paying for a job so I never need go over budget, which is really important!”
Amanda Ashworth, Cambridge
Amanda started up Excelsior, a boutique Recruitment Consultancy that expertly places candidates within specialist sectors, including HR, Sales, Marketing, PR, Retail and Senior appointments.
“As a start up we have limited time and also small budgets,” she says. “We use PeoplePerHour.com as it allows us to buy in the skills we need,” she says.
“We are a start up that has been established for just under two months but we are already successful. Using freelancers enables us to get on with what we need to do and outsource other things like marketing, SEO etc to freelancers without having to commit ourselves and also we are able to set the budget.”
“We plan to use freelancers to allow the business to grow with our ambition's growth plans.”
She also started up her own business in response to redundancy. “The company we were working for was in financial difficulties and we all faced redundancy. One of the Directors had already been made redundant twice before so we decided to start a business.”
She also started up her own business because she found being a single mum a struggle to work with other companies. She found very negative attitudes.
“I am a young single mum and after going back to work after my maternity leave I struggled to find a job that would allow a good work/life balance whilst still being able to raise my son. I faced the issue that if I wanted to work full time I needed a lot of support and the childcare cost were high or work part time and earn very little. Employers have a negative attitude to mums and especially single mums within the recruitment industry as you can no longer do the 8-8 required by most agencies.
“ Excelsior was started by three female directors all in their 20s all for different reasons. I started because I wanted to make a better life for my son and myself whilst being able to manage my hours around him.
Hannah another director is a university graduate who always knew at some point that she wanted to be a business women and have control of her career. Becky the third director having been made redundant twice before wanted to make sure this was not going to happen again.”
Belinda Robinson, Bradford
Belinda Robinson runs Office Boutique, an online Stationery and Business Gifts outlet that provides distinctive, unique and stylish products.
“I have use PeoplePerHour.com to help source freelancers to keep costs low. She has also found “that freelancers are more creative and come up with some different ideas which if you are a small business (as I am) can be helpful and helps you to add some uniqueness to your business.
“I also use people through PeoplePerHour.com to sample/see how good a certain specialist service is - if we went direct to the service provider it would be very expensive. For instance I am using through PeoplePerHour.com the services of a freelance PR professional who runs their own PR agency – they are doing some PR work for our business and I am also going to be looking at getting some SEO work done separately.”
Remotely financial
Ashley Morgan is the director of financial institution Henderson Morgan with a difference. All their staff work remotely.
“Henderson Morgan is an international business and we have offices in New Zealand, Belize and the UK. We are a fledging financial institution providing a range of account, merchant services and wealth management advice,” Ashley says.
“Unlike many traditional financial institutions with large bloated offices, all of our staff work remotely and we have successfully worked with freelancers on PeoplePerHour.Com.”
Virtual Jukebox
Adam runs a virtual jukebox business with results that are real.
“Our business is called The Virtual Jukebox, we sell exactly what this is - a virtual jukebox. Essentially it's an internet radio player that receives requests from SMS and mobiles. We sell it to pubs and bars around the UK,” Adam says.
“So given we offer a virtual service, it made sense to keep it a virtual business. We started about six months ago, and it’s funded from personal investment so clearly it was in our interest to keep costs low.
“We've used outsourcing throughout each step of the way to get us to where we are, without the need for any staff overhead. This includes branding and design in the early stages, through to telesales once the product was launched. The whole business was launched and now running so far without having to employ a single member of staff.”
Water works
Danny Gillard and Niamh Walsh run a tourist business aimed at international and domestic customers. They offer guided kayaking tours with BCU Instructors seeing London from a unique angle.
To save costs they have the company’s administration needs are provided remotely by consultants on PeoplePerHour.Com.
Niamh says they use freelancers to keep costs low and remain flexible. They have increased margins and now operate a thriving business. They are able to run a ‘virtual business’ model due to advances in technology.
She says: “Exploring London by kayak is a great opportunity to see a unique part of the city using a sustainable form of tourism by paddle powered craft leaving no carbon footprint’s innovative idea.”
For further information, photos, interviews and case studies, please contact:
Sami McCabe
t: +44 (0) 20 3393 8277
m: +44 (0) 7789 777 440
e: sami@ubiquitycomms.com
PeoplePerHour.com Background Information
PeoplePerHour.com connects businesses with skilled individuals to get work done remotely.
The site serves the small business sector and has over 45,000 registered users growing at 15% per month, of whom 70% are micro-businesses (five or less employees) and 20% are between five and 20 employees.
The company started in 2007 and has been grown consistently, unabated by the recession. This growth has been fuelled by companies’ need to drive down costs and find more innovative, cost-effective and flexible ways of getting jobs done.
Main service categories on the site are IT& Web, Graphic Design, Telesales, Marketing and PR, Copywriting and Translation services.
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