Question

Building a team for a business is very important. Do you bring team members on board as partners, employees, and/or outsourced? Tell me the pros and cons of each.

Answer 1

Partner

Pros

· More actively involved members

· Added knowledge

· Distributed financial burden

· More Committed

Cons

· Reduced decision making power/autonomy

· Potential Disagreements

· Reduced profit per person

Employee

Pros

· Vast Knowledge base

· No loss in autonomy of owner

· Less disagreements

· Bring no addition to financial base of company

· Low overall costs associated with employee

Cons

· Fixed Financial Cost

· Less committed than partner

· Retention problem

Further if an employee is outsourced, the costs of retention reduce but the accountability of the employee also reduces. It is only beneficial in case of specialised non-core activity being outsourced. Outsourcing core activities may even lead to trade secret spill.