Can I ask my full-time freelancer to help me with personal work frequently

[#1]

I am a first-time employer, and recently hired a freelancer for a full-time job with the job title "Need assistant for a monthly contract requiring stock trading/finance-related work".

In the job post, I said the job is assisting me in stock trading all day like tasks like research, tracking my portfolio all day long, sending me constant alerts related to my portfolio and market change, and grunt work related to trading.

I also added a small point in the work description "Any other personal assistance work."

Now I wonder where do I draw the line in personal assistance. I have many personal assistance tasks that I need frequently like "Look who is a good doctor in my area for X health issue and book an appointment", "Call everyone and find who has this product available", "Look for best and cheap flight connection between these 2 countries".

Although part-time work, these tasks are completely unrelated to finance. I know a lot of white-collar workers don't like to do such thing and believe they are being treated like a servant.

So my questions are:

How do I know if my freelancer employee is okay with such work? I can try asking but I am not sure if he will say yes anyway since after all, I am his boss.

[#2]

If you hired someone to help with stock trading and finance work then I should think that they won't want to perform these other tasks for you; you should hire a personal assistant for that. (And even then, I think it would be wildly inappropriate to ask anyone to run your dating profile for you; you'd also be misrepresenting yourself to your matches.)

However, this is only my opinion and the only way to know how your freelancer would feel is to ask them.

[#3]

Varun, you should keep the expectations realistic and only ask the freelancer you have hired to perform the task you have specified in the contract.

Don't ask that person to go beyond the contract. That would seem unfair to the freelancer and will probably end in a disagreement.

It's better to seek another freelancer for the new job and specify carefully what things you need from that new person.

Then, I believe, everyone wins. 👍

[#4]

Keep the tasks you ask the freelancer in the realm of what you engaged them for originally. If you want to change the scope of the engagement to more personal tasks, have a conversation with them to ask if they are willing to expand that scope. But as Christine mentioned a professional hired for finance is unlikely to want to add your personal tasks to their plate.

I think it would also be helpful for you to reframe your mindset from “boss” to “client”. Freelancers on Upwork work with a variety of different clients running their own businesses. We build our own businesses and processes and have the ability to choose who we work with and what types of tasks we take on. As the client you can ask for deliverables, but you can dictate what we do or how we do it, like a boss in a traditional employment situation could.

[#5]

So I talked to the guy today. I made it very clear that's optional and he doesn't have to do any personal stuff at all if he doesn't want to.

He said he is more than happy to help me with such tasks as long they are computer-based and doesn't require leaving the house. Even with that, I have made it clear that it's entirely optional and he can tell me if he wants to stop doing such tasks in future at any time.