Yes, you can. The awkward part is that when you ask can I hire a part time offshore staff member, most of the Australian market says no. 24x7 Direct publishes the answer in its own FAQ: "Unfortunately no. We only hire full time dedicated staff for you." No law requires that. It is a preference about how the supplier would rather be invoiced, and it has quietly become the default answer across the Australian market.
Awkward timing for professional services, because the sector that most needs twenty hours a week rather than forty has just counted its bench again. Outstaffer sells the alternative and publishes what it charges, so read the next few numbers as a disclosure of interest.
ASIC counted the bench on 18 September. It is 149 deep.
ASIC released the August financial adviser exam results on 18 September. 220 candidates sat. 149 passed, a rate of 67.73 per cent, and of the 173 sitting for the first time, 125 got through. Since the exam began, 22,921 people have sat it and 21,262 have passed. The next sitting is 5 November.
149 new advisers. Nationally.
An advice practice of ten to fifty people is not solving that by hiring another adviser. What is short is the work around the adviser: file preparation, data collection, drafting, review scheduling, the follow-up nobody bills for. That work is rarely forty hours.
What part time staff actually cost, on published rates
24x7 Direct's home page runs its own comparison: "$12 per hour" for its remote staff against "$30 per hour" for local staff.
Take twenty hours a week of file preparation. At their published local rate that is $600 a week and $31,200 a year, before super. At their published remote rate it is $240 a week and $12,480 a year, except the same company will not sell you twenty hours. The quote you can accept is forty, which is $24,960 for capacity you do not need yet.
An employer of record prices the other way. You agree the hours and the salary with the person, and Outstaffer's published fee is $250 per employee per month, read off the live pricing page today. That is $3,000 a year, and it does not shrink when the hours do.
Why does a part time offshore staff member cost more per hour?
Because every pricing model in this market carries a fixed component, and part time spreads that component over fewer hours. An hourly agency handles it by refusing to quote below full time. A per-head fee handles it by charging the same $250 whether the person works twenty hours or forty. Neither is hiding anything. Both say the same thing: splitting a role costs money.
The honest case for a full time offshore hire
Full time usually wins on cost per hour, and it wins more often than the question assumes.
It wins on retention too. A twenty hour role with nothing attached to it is exactly the role somebody leaves in six months, and the replacement costs more than the hours you saved. If you can see forty hours of work inside twelve months, buying twenty now is a decision you will unwind by winter.
When is twenty hours the wrong answer?
When the work is not really twenty hours and you have not checked. The case holds where the task is bounded, still bounded next year, and counted rather than guessed. Most founders have not counted. They have a budget, and the budget is doing the estimating.
Related reading
- Two Of Your Thirty Staff Already Work Somewhere Else
- Your Card Costs Fall On 1 October. The Bigger Number Did Not Move.
Buy the hours, not the headcount
Count the work before you pick the number. Start where demand is already straining you, then check what a head actually costs once it is itemised. If the honest answer is thirty hours, do not buy twenty because twenty was the figure in your head.
A part time offshore staff member is worth buying where the work is bounded and permanent, and worth refusing where it is a budget wearing a workload costume. Run one role through and see the numbers rather than arguing with a supplier's minimum.
So which of your roles is genuinely twenty hours, and which one have you rounded down?
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