Last week, I wrote a blog post about why I would encourage women who are going back to work to take a salaried part-time job over becoming a freelancer.
To summarise I made the following points:
⭐ Many women would like £1,000-£3,000 per month.
⭐ Part-time salaried work means you get paid holiday, pension pay (over £10k per year) and taxes automatically deducted.
⭐ If you do decide to go freelance, you need to set yourself up as a proper company, give yourself a salary and add on 20.07% to your hourly rate to cover holiday and pension pay.
⭐ At the bottom of the post, we gave you a list of amazing companies that are helping pair women with flexible, part-time salaried work.
I also made the point that for some women, freelancing is the only option. In that case, my hope was that the TechPixies Pro Rata Calculator might help determine how much you should charge if you are in that situation. Equally if you are unsure what part-time salaried rate equates to in hourly terms, you’ll also want to download the TechPixies Pro Rata Calculator.
This week, I thought I’d discuss 4 benefits of part-time salaried work vs freelancing work.
It is important to remember that these suggestions are very much geared towards women who have taken a career break vs. women who might be leaving corporate life to have a family.
There is a difference. A woman who has taken a career break doesn’t often keep her network going and so is starting from scratch when it comes to freelancing whereas a woman who is just leaving corporate life has the unique opportunity to leverage her already existing network to launch as a freelancer.
In that spirit… here are a four bonuses that a part-time salaried job can give a women who needs to rebuild her working relationships:
- Human Contact
- Job security
- Career Advancement
- Better networking
Human Contact This might sound funny, but if you have been home looking after young children or ailing adults, going into freelancing will likely feel like an extension of your isolation. One of the things that women value is human connection and that is much more likely to happen when you take a salaried part-time job (even in our current virtual working environment). That said, remember that interviewing for a job is as much about interviewing them as they are interviewing you. Make sure you ask a potential employer about their work culture and for the chance to speak with a few of the team. The last thing you want to do if you are trying to escape isolation is to work in a culture where no one speaks to each other!
Job Security Is not given, especially in this post-Brexit, COVID-19 environment. However, companies who offer salaries with paid holiday, pensions and have training budgets are more established and less likely to buckle under the pressure of a difficult economy. That said, if you are made redundant, there is usually a redundancy package (but check your contract to be sure as in the UK, this often only kicks in after you’ve worked for two years). Freelancers do not benefit from this at all because they aren’t considered employees. So even if you freelance for the same company for several years, if they no longer need you, legally you are not be entitled to a redundancy package.
Career Advancement Companies that pay part-time salaried roles are often are more established and therefore you may have the opportunity to move into a more advanced role and/or get more hours should they become available. Again, unless you create these opportunities for yourself as a freelancer, they don’t really come along.
Better networking Eestablished companies mean established clients, you’ll get to connect with people within the company you work for and also with their existing client list. You’ll likely connect with people in more powerful positions than you, which can be great for career advancement later on. As a freelancer, you are 100% responsible for your network and often few women have clients from the get-go, so you’ll have to hustle for them –which is entirely doable, but it does delay your ability to earn as you have to find the clients first, then negotiate a contract and then deliver on it.
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The TechPixies Pro Rata Calculator
If you do decide that freelancing is the way to go, I know it is tricky to try and do the calculations yourself when it comes to how much you should charge in the context of a full time or part-time salary. So I’ve made it easy for you and created the TechPixies Pro Rata Calculator which tells you exactly what the hourly rate equivalent should be for the various salary levels. I hope you find it super useful and will also consider receiving our weekly tips if you aren’t already.