In-house teams – the gold standard or should freelancers be part of the mix?

It’s something that all agency founders have wrangled with, as we build an operation true to our values and the services we can offer clients.

 By Louise Turner

Many PR and communications agencies will have a payrolled team who deliver most of their work. But this comes with natural constraints – from expertise to time and talent. So a good many agencies will also need freelance support occasionally, whether that’s to provide specialist skills, cover peak periods of work or absences. 

 A recent interview in The Times quoted PR agency owner Rachel Allison, of Axe + Saw, saying of freelancers: “…ultimately their heart and soul is not into what you are creating. It’s a means to an end for them. They turn up, do the job, it could be [rubbish] – they don’t care.” 

 I couldn’t disagree more. 

FREELANCERS FOR THE WIN 

 We all have our own experiences, and I don’t know Rachel so don’t know what hers was, but I can talk about my own history of working with a freelance team. It’s been nothing but positive. 

I feel privileged that the freelancers on our team choose to work with us. Along with my two payrolled colleagues, we work hard to help the freelancers feel part of Wordsmiths. We share our business plans, talk about our challenges, and seek their opinions.

Our team WhatsApp might be at the nerdier end of word-based conversations, but it’s also filled with support and warmth, with people regularly sharing other work opportunities, or asking for people’s help. Making sure freelancers share our values has helped build a mini-community, rather than creating a place where people compete with one another. 

 THE BEST THERE IS – IN FREELANCE FORM 

 Having a freelance team enables us to offer clients the best person for the project, not the person whose wage we’re paying and who needs occupying. Having more than 10 people to choose from – all of whom we vet carefully and work with regularly – means we often have someone with sector expertise, or who has worked on a similar project. We don’t recruit anyone with less than a decade of working experience, meaning our clients always get access to a senior team.

With the heady days of multiple retainers seemingly fading into the distance, we’re only as good as our last project. Clients can choose not to engage us for the next one. And that’s the same for the freelance team. There’s an incentive to always be at the top of their game because freelancers want you to use them again.

Freelancers also benefit from heading off to different businesses and bringing back what they’ve learned in the form of new ideas or approaches. Our clients benefit from that too. I’m not saying a person getting a wage can’t or won’t always give their best – I work with two amazing people who do just that. But it’s fair to say there’s slightly less incentive to always bring your A-game when you’ll be getting a wage regardless. 

 IS AN AGENCY THE SAME AS A FREELANCER? 

 Don’t agencies solve the same problem as freelancers, just using a slightly different model? A client either wants a service it doesn’t have a specialism in, or it wants extra resources. That’s exactly what we use freelancers for. 

As agencies, we have to get under the skin of our clients – their values, their audiences, their language – to be able to do our best work. Freelancers have to do the same to be at their best when working for agencies. 

 But I’d go one step further in drawing parallels between some agencies and freelancers. One of the services we provide is acting as an outsourced copy team for other agencies – effectively the same model that freelancers have. We work with a wide range of agency types, from advertising to digital, brand to full service, enabling them to offer their clients more services, a quicker turnaround, or subject specialists. Sometimes it’s obvious we’re agency partners, other times we are white-labelled and act as part of the agency’s extended team. 

 Every agency owner will decide what’s best for them, but I’d rather the flexibility of a freelance team than the straight-jacket of only a pay-rolled one – and every agency client out there agrees.

This opinion piece was originally published on Influence Online in June 2024.