Telecommuting: 5 Key Differences Between Remote Working And Freelancing
Telecommuting is a pandemic-popularized work system where some or all employees of an organization work outside of their offices at locations such as home, cafes, and private libraries. According to a Statista research, 17% of the American workforce worked 5 days a week from home before the pandemic, a number that has now surged to 44% during the pandemic.
Before the pandemic, telecommuting remained a potentially disruptive work trend which very few organizations gave a worthy consideration. This standpoint ensured a majority of organizations continued investing heavily in expanding and creating the best customer experience at existing and newly created physical offices.
When the pandemic struck, telecommuting became the only option to an indefinite grounding of work operations and higher number of retrenchments than we witnessed. Seven months on, many organizations continue to work from home and there’s no denying telecommuting is here to stay.
Remote working and freelancing are the two major variations of telecommuting that are often used interchangeably. However, these two words differ considerably and this article highlights the major differences between the two terms:
Job Security
Remote workers differ from freelancers in the permanency of their position. They are typically full-time employees who work outside of their physical offices due to company restructuring and compelling situations such as the pandemic.
In contrast, freelancers work on temporary, short-term projects and don’t get any formal work contracts. Freelancers can either work infrequently on one-time projects or relatively permanent schedules based on good client relationship or via a freelance retainer.
According to Hubstaff, freelance retainers consist of a contractual agreement between a freelancer and the client. This rarer form of freelance arrangement is one of the ways to ensure some level of job security in freelancing. It guarantees a certain hour cap at specified rates and for a predetermined amount of time.
Pay Rates And Structures
Corporate organizations who have varying employee types such as permanent and contract staff members pay lower salaries to their contract staff. Similarly, freelancers are paid way lower than remote workers for similar jobs and tasks.
The most common freelance pay structure is hourly which can either be paid at the end of the project or the end of a predetermined billing cycle. Remote workers continue to be paid monthly and are eligible for monthly or yearly bonuses.
Employer Obligations
Remote workers enjoy full employee benefits such as periodic training sessions, insurance policies, and mandatory leaves while working outside the office but freelancers don’t. This makes it personal responsibility for freelancers to take care of these work variables by themselves.
The erosion or non-existence of other basic employer obligations to freelancers allows organizations, businesses, and individuals to recruit in huge numbers while keeping permanent employer numbers at the minimum. Unfortunately, this has been proven to encourage predatory behaviors among many freelance employers who demand arduous tasks be carried out under near-impossible hours under the threat of abrupt job termination.
Work Credit
Remote workers get full credit for their work while freelancers hardly get any work credits. This allows remote workers to build a resume as they work while freelancers lack such opportunity. Freelancers may even be informed before employment that they won’t get work credits.
Thanks to platforms such as Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer.com, freelancers now enjoy the benefit of sharing positive reviews, previous job information, and qualifications with prospective clients via their profiles. Other ways, freelancers who don’t use any of these platforms now claim rights to previous projects by work category include:
Writers And Creatives: writers and creatives are the most deprived in terms of work rights. One way to showcase your works is to make a habit of local file saving even when your employer has their own text editors and work suites. This will enable you to share files of previous works. You’ll also need a personal blog or cloud-based portfolio that prospective clients can browse through when you are bidding for new jobs.
Information Technology: Repositories such as GitHub, Bitbucket, and Azure DevOps Services help IT professionals including developers, data scientists, and designers to store and access their previous projects timelessly. This allows prospective clients to view open-source projects freelancers have contributed to and their personal projects.
Work Intensity
Full-time employees of various organizations enjoy the freedom to close work daily at a predetermined time allowing them time for other personal endeavors. This remains the case for most remote workers, they have fixed meeting times, work hours, and often get the weekend off. This is plausible because they are not paid on an hourly or project basis.
Freelancers on the other hand work more intensively than remote workers to break even. This is where the mantra, “more projects; more money” comes to play. Freelancers can gradually enjoy better work schedules as they improve on their skills which allows them to charge higher on a lower number of projects.
Final Thoughts
As the wave of telecommuting catches on in the corporate world there will be a projected increase in the number of remote workers and freelancers in the future workforce. The difference in the permanency of positions held by remote workers and freelancers underlies the wide gap between both job types regardless of corresponding skill levels.
Freelancer wages dwarf in comparison to those of remote workers. Employer obligations and work credits are non-negotiable for remote workers while they’re non-existent in the world of freelance.
Ultimately, the amount of work hours freelancers are required to put in weekly is extremely high compared to their remote-working counterparts. Freelancers can leverage a skills upgrade and put in deliberate efforts to build a great portfolio in exchange for better work flexibility and wages.
