The decision between outsourcing a function and hiring someone full-time is often made on gut feeling. When you put actual numbers on it, the picture shifts considerably - especially for businesses scaling on tight margins.
The true cost of a full-time hire
A mid-level marketing coordinator in Poland earns roughly 6,500-8,000 PLN gross per month. Add employer social contributions, equipment, onboarding time, and management overhead, and the real annual cost lands 30-40% above the base salary. That figure rarely appears in hiring forecasts.
What outsourcing actually costs
A comparable scope of work handled by a specialized agency or freelancer typically runs 15-25% less in total annual spend - with no onboarding lag, no sick leave costs, and the ability to scale the engagement up or down within weeks rather than months. The tradeoff is less institutional knowledge and less direct control over daily priorities.
When hiring wins on cost
For functions that require deep internal context - customer relationships, product decisions, compliance - outsourcing creates hidden costs in briefing time and error correction. A 2022 McKinsey analysis found that companies outsourcing core customer-facing roles spent 18% more on service recovery than those keeping those roles in-house.
The practical rule: outsource repeatable, well-defined tasks. Hire for judgment-dependent roles. Mixing both based on function type, not budget pressure alone, is where the savings actually hold.