In-House Employees vs Creative Agency: Which Way is right for your business?

Steve Jobs famously said that we hire skilled people not so that we can tell them what to do but instead so that they can tell us what to do. In that simple yet profound statement, this industry leader emphasized the importance of skill and letting the skill work for you. At one point or another in the operations of a company, there will always be a need for a particular skill.  The human resource department will usually have to decide whether to hire that expertise or to engage the services of an external skills provider.

Market trends show that it is becoming common practice for companies to prefer working with external creative agencies rather than having to hire and maintain a team of in-house employees. At Clinet Online, a creative agency based in Nairobi, we believe there are unique advantages that working with an agency will have which own staff is likely to miss.

The Benefit of Specialization

American poet Ralph Emerson said that the shoemaker makes a good shoe because he makes nothing else. That is the benefit of specialization. Engaging the services of an agency lets your company focus on what it does best and assigns the rest to the company that does them best. The creative does only a specific task, for example, digital marketing and branding, and they have accumulated the needed set of skills and experience that would otherwise take long for your company to possess or hire.

You get the Industry Best Practices

Because the creative agency works on a wide range of clients and has been in the industry for a long time, they have learnt the industry best practices and already know what works for other companies out there. Your company will, therefore, not have to burden itself with researching on latest technologies, for example, especially if that is not in your line of operation.

Lower Costs of Getting and Releasing Talent

It can be expensive to maintain an in-house team of employees, especially when the task at hand is a one-off rather than routine. You may need to train them, maintain a separate office for them, etc. When work reduces, you may need to lay some of them off, and this has a negative effect both on the person and on the motivation of those who remain. All these are dealt with when using a creative agency. You can scale resources up or down as the task at hand demands. You will also get a wide array of skills than your budget would have probably supported in-house.

A new way of looking at Things

With time, a company adopts a certain way of doing things, and this gradually stifles creativity. Given that a creative agency is not subject to your company’s culture and they also work with unique types of clients, there is a high possibility that they will give you solutions that are more creative and forward-thinking, and ones that are less tied to your line of sight.

Could you be at this junction as a company and wondering whether to hire skill or enlist an agency? Talk to us at Clinet Online and our team of experts will be ready to get their hands dirty so that your business can stand out. We are based in Nairobi, Kenya, and we offer a wide range of professional services such as web and mobile development, digital branding and advertising, website hosting, among others, to clients within and outside the country. Talk to us today, and our technical department shall become yours.