Hiring for a Small Business in 2026: VAs, Freelancers or Employed Staff

Most small businesses hire the way they've always hired. Someone gets busy, someone quits, or there's a new thing to do, and the default response is: let's get a person in. Full-time, on payroll, with a contract and a probation period and a Slack handle. It's the path of least resistance, and it tends to be the most expensive one, in money and in mental overhead.

I don't think that's the right starting point anymore. With employer National Insurance now at 15% and the Employment Allowance only partially softening the blow, the arithmetic on a full-time UK hire looks meaningfully different than it did a few years ago. For a founder trying to protect margins while the business is still growing, that gap matters. And when you factor in that the work is often uneven, the role changes as the business changes, and you need output fast rather than after a three-month onboarding, the case for employed staff gets thinner still.

Inside Martian Made, I've not hired UK-based employees. That's a deliberate choice, not an oversight. The employment costs in this country are hard to justify when you're still in growth mode and every pound of margin counts. Instead, I've used freelancers, overseas contractors working on a permanent full-time basis, and virtual assistants, also full time and ongoing. Most of them work within UK time zones, speak English as their first language, and bring a work ethic that I'd put up against anyone. It's been one of the better structural decisions I've made.

I'm not saying I'd never hire UK staff as the business scales. But right now, as a lean operation trying to grow, it doesn't make sense. That's my honest position, and it's shaped how I think about the three models below.

There are three real ways to get work done in a small ecommerce or founder-led business: employed staff, freelancers on a project basis, and virtual assistants on an ongoing arrangement. Each has a place. None is universally right.

Employed staff

The case for a full-time employee is straightforward: you get continuity, someone who genuinely learns your business over time, and a wide enough remit to fill gaps you didn't anticipate. For roles that require deep institutional knowledge or real ownership of a process, there's no substitute.

The cost, though, is not just the salary. Employer NI at 15% on earnings above the secondary threshold adds up fast. Then there's pension contributions, statutory leave, the time you spend managing the person, and the fact that their workload will be uneven whether you like it or not. You pay for the slow weeks the same as the busy ones. And if the role changes, or the business changes, you've got a fixed cost that doesn't flex.

Speed to productivity is another thing. A new employee needs onboarding, time to learn the business, time to find their feet. Fine if you're building a long-term team. Less fine if you needed the output last month.

Freelancers

Freelancers are the right tool when you know what you need, you can describe it clearly, and the work has a definable end. Copywriter for a product launch. Designer for a rebrand. Developer to build a Shopify integration. You brief them, they deliver, you pay the invoice, you both move on.

The thing I've noticed is that quality is genuinely high when the brief is good. If you can't tell someone exactly what you want and how you'll know it's done, the output suffers. That's usually the client's fault, not the freelancer's. But it does mean freelancers need a certain kind of upfront clarity that not every founder has the headspace to provide.

Cost is project-based, which is good for cash flow. You're not carrying a fixed monthly commitment. The flip side is that a good freelancer isn't always available when you need them. The fifth project together tends to go better than the first, so rotating through new people constantly means paying a quality tax every time.

Management overhead is low once you've got someone good, and then you lose them to a better client or their rates go up and you're back to the search. That's the honest version.

Virtual assistants

VAs are the model I've found most useful, and the one most small businesses are badly underusing.

The ongoing operational work a small ecommerce brand generates, reporting, inbox management, listing updates, supplier comms, scheduling, content formatting, the repeatable stuff that needs doing every week but doesn't need a full-time employee and isn't really project-shaped, that's where a VA earns its keep. And it earns it quietly, week after week, without you having to think about it.

A good VA on a retainer gives you consistency without the employment overhead. You pay for a bank of hours, and the work gets done within those hours. If things are quiet, you're not paying for downtime the same way you would with an employee. If things pick up, you can often add hours without the friction of a formal hire.

The more you document and systematise your business, the more powerful this becomes. A well-briefed VA running a clear process is like having the mundane parts of the job handled by someone who genuinely cares about getting them right. I've seen founders who spend half their week on operational admin suddenly have that time back. It changes what they can focus on.

The trade-off is output ceiling. A VA is excellent at executing a clear process, not inventing one. They're not going to make strategic decisions or own a complex problem end to end. That part is still yours. But if you've built the process, documented it properly and handed it over cleanly, the VA runs it and you get on with the work only you can do.

Speed to productivity sits between a full-time hire and a good freelancer. You'll spend time onboarding and building trust. Once that's done, a VA who knows your business well is a genuinely valuable thing, somewhere between a long-term freelancer and a junior member of staff, without the employment risk on either side.

Which one fits which kind of work

The way I'd think about it: if the work is ongoing, operational and process-driven, a VA retainer is almost always the right answer for a lean business. If it's a defined project with a clear output, a freelancer is cleaner. If it needs deep ownership, long-term institutional knowledge, and the volume genuinely justifies full-time hours, then you're in employed territory.

Most small businesses default to employment for all three categories, which is why they're overstaffed on slow weeks and slightly chaotic in how they use that headcount. A cleaner read of the actual work, how recurring it is, how well-defined it is, how much ownership it needs, usually leads somewhere different.

The question isn't which model you're most comfortable with. It's which one the work actually calls for.