The pros and cons of hiring an in-house production team
In 2023 if you haven’t realised yet, video dominates social media. TikTok is built for it, Instagram prioritises it over photos and YouTube is the internets video powerhouse building brands and changing careers.
As a business or even as people, we want to get the best quality, for the best price with the greatest return on investment.
When it comes to video production you have to weigh up the costs of the amount of videos you need, how long it will take to create them and how much ‘production value’ you will see onscreen.
One option is to hire internally and have your own video creators. Here’s some pros and cons to consider when hiring.
In-house Pros:
Your team are readily available to create as you need them.
You don’t need to budget labour for each project as you are paying a salary.
They will understand your company values and message better than someone being hired in.
Your team will feel more comfortable working with people they know.
Your communication may be better as deadlines are set and met in-house so everyone can stay on top of them.
In-house Cons:
It can be expensive. Effective video production is done as a team. Hiring one person to do it all will likely be too much for one person and cost you about £30,000 a year. At the very least having someone to film and someone to edit could cost £60,000 a year.
You could be paying a lot of money when there isn’t work to be done. If a video takes 2 days to film and 3 days to edit and your marketing only needs one video that month, what are your staff going to be doing for the other 3 weeks of the month.
Who is going to train your staff? Video production is a fast moving industry with new trends, techniques and equipment. As video producers we spend time developing our skills, attending training with other industry professionals to be able to offer a better service to clients.
Lack of varied knowledge. As an employee it’s your staffs job to create videos online with your company goals, there job can become linear. Video production companies often work with a variety of industries and its this crossover of knowledge that can give your video the creative push it needs. Inspiration should come from a variety of sources.
Where do the ideas come from? Creation comes from a team. As a business owner you know your business like no one else, but do you know what’s best for it? As a team member you’re hired on your technical expertise but do you have the ideas too. A team of creatives draw upon their experiences, projects, research and technical abilities to bring together an idea they know they can execute.
The decision to hire in-house can be made easier by where you are as a business. If you’re a small business needing interview based videos on a regular basis then a staff member can pull these off quite easily. If you’re a big business with regular video output across different mediums, you either need a very big creative team or to hire an external company that can do it for you.