Is the grass always greener? Check out the perils and the promise of the freelance worker

Ever been tempted by the thought of being your own boss? Imagine – no one to tell you what to do, no one to get in the way of your best ideas, no need to ask when you can take your holidays. Everything up to you. One way of getting there is winning the lottery, another is working freelance.

It’s a word that goes back to medieval times when it was used to describe soldiers who sold their skills to those prepared to pay their market rate. Today it’s an increasingly common way of working for people in a range of occupations and appeals to many who feel constrained by corporate culture, but the basic idea remains the same as it was five hundred years ago.

The pros and cons
What you gain is freedom of movement, what you can lose is a sense of belonging. You can end up feeling isolated from normal support networks, because suddenly you are responsible for your own welfare, training, safety, career development, equipment, professional updating and a thousand other things it’s easy to remain unaware of in the relatively cosseted existence of full-time employment.

So before you leap into this exciting and potentially rewarding way of working, stand back and take a look at the perils as well as the perks.

Who does it?
It’s always been a common way of working for writers, artists and performers but the range of occupations with a substantial number of freelancers is growing steadily. Anyone with a marketable skill can choose to go it alone.

Websites like the Freelance Centre www.freelancecentre.com offer a free directory listing for those with skills to sell. Their categories include accountants, healthcare consultants, landscape architects and computer trainers. Other sites that can help you see if your skills could be marketable are: www.smarterwork.com
www.homeworkinguk.com
www.ownbase.org.uk

Areas of work that have problems recruiting staff are always keen to employ freelancers. If you know a lot about e-business systems or website design, for example, you should have no shortage of clients.

 Did they leave or were they pushed?
It’s a common perception that freelance work is a last resort for people who’ve been made redundant. That can certainly provide the necessary impetus to bring about a change of working style, and redundancy payments can help finance ideas that have been waiting for an opportunity to go live. However, a recent survey by The Freelance Centre found that 63% of the 400 freelancers questioned had positively chosen to change to working in this way because they felt it had benefits for their personal life and career development. The most common reasons given for making the jump were:

• Independence
• Dissatisfaction with salaried employment
• Freedom to select who to work with, when and where
• The best way to develop a career
• Flexibility of hours to fit in with parenting

What’s it really like?
Being freelance is different from other forms of self-employment – you still work for an employer or several employers but have to develop a completely different set of relationships with them. Employers are now your customers, you are their supplier. You have to become indispensable to them, providing solutions to their problems, some of which they may not even realise they had. In many ways you have to behave like their dream employee, being more willing and available than you may have got used to whilst in a ‘proper job’.

You also have to be aware of, and sensitive to, the fact that you can be seen as a threat by your customer’s conventional employees, who may regard you as taking work they could do. Successful freelancing relies on the co-operation of everyone you come into contact with. Work that brings you into conflict with an existing workforce can be more trouble than it’s worth.

Tips to take home

• If you can, go for the luxury of trying out freelancing on a part-time basis to see if it suits you. One way to do this is reduce the hours you currently work and build up freelance work and contacts gradually.
  
  
• Don’t rely on getting business from people you know through your day job. Many employment contracts prevent using such contacts for your own gain.
  
  
• Join a professional association. It’s an excellent way of keeping up to date with new developments and a potential source of new contacts.
  
  
• Keep in regular touch with people you have worked for before. Remind them you exist, are available and offer a range of uncomplicated solutions.
  
  
• Select work based on what you do well and enjoy as well as how much it pays. The more satisfied clients you have, the greater your confidence to turn unsuitable or poorly paid work will become.
  
  
• Be realistic about how much you’re worth. Worry about overpricing makes many freelancers live a hand-to-mouth existence. Value what you have to offer and others will too.
  
  
• Allow for non-productive time and let this be reflected in what you charge. This includes time spent training or updating, making contacts, tendering for work and marketing yourself.
  
  
• Remember, what you are paid is not what you get to keep. You will at some later point have to pay tax and national insurance contributions. Budget for that and be meticulous about keeping accounts and receipts.
  
  
• There is an important distinction between offering a ‘contract for services’ and working with a ‘contract of employment’. If you have a small number of clients for whom you regularly work the Inland Revenue can claim that you are employed and ‘employers’ will deduct tax and National Insurance at source – which means you will not be able to claim legitimate expenses against tax. The rules that govern this have become known as IR35. Full details can be seen at the Inland revenue website.
  
  
• Finally, if it doesn’t improve the quality of your life, why are you doing it?

Related Links

Working from home: what can you do?
Home working scams
How to research a career

For more advice on Choosing a Career visit iVillage.co.uk