Hiring Freelancers: What Not To Do
Freelancers work in various industries, including sales, IT, writing, customer service, accounting, software development, health, education and project management. As a business owner, you may find more benefits to hiring freelancers than traditional employees. If you choose to hire freelancers for your business, you also need to ensure a productive and efficient team. By learning what not to do, you can understand more about how you should treat your workers.
Hire Without Thorough Vetting
Verifying the background and qualifications of any worker can feel overwhelming at times. How do you know you found the right freelancer? When vetting workers, review their professional background in depth. Look for work samples and portfolios, along with insight on previous clients. If the freelancer has references, contact them to learn more about the person.
If you use an online platform to find freelancers, many companies vet for you. For instance, if you hire through the Fiverr platform, you can view portfolio samples, rates, years active, and experience. When it comes to remote workers, you can hire those outside your country. Platforms like Guru allow you to search for workers in the Philippines.
Lack a Payment Plan
How are you going to pay your freelancers? When you have remote workers, you may not be able to direct deposit paychecks or pay through the platforms you are most used to. For instance, if you have workers overseas, look for a cost-effective platform for transferring money to your freelancers. Remitly, for example, provides low-cost money transfers. If you have remote workers in the Philippines, it only costs $3.99 to send less than $1,000. For more than $1,000, there are no fees. Be sure to outline the payment terms within the freelance contract.
When working with freelancers, you generally have fewer overhead costs. You do not have to pay for employer payroll taxes, workers' compensation or benefits. Most businesses pay freelancers by project rather than by the hour. However, you can have contracts that retain workers for a certain number of hours per week.
Slack on Communication
According to the experts, your company relationships may be less hierarchical with freelancers, but you still need to communicate. When you work with your team and thoughtfully manage them, they are more likely to continue working with you. You need to set expectations and learn what the independent contractor wants out of your relationship. Be careful not to treat your team as transactional. You want them to give you their best work and care about giving your company their best work. Be open and honest and give them the same respect you would any employee.
Find efficient ways to communicate with your remote workers. Many people choose Zoom, email, and other forms of electronic communication. If you have multiple people working on the same project, consider using a PDF merging tool. This keeps you from having an overflow of documents in different formats. When everything is merged into a single PDF, you can rearrange pages so they are in order.
Working with freelancers can be a mutually beneficial relationship. It's important that you thoroughly vet your independent contractors and get to know them as they work on projects for your company. As long as you understand how to communicate with your contractors and have a plan in place for hiring and payment, you can successfully build an effective and happy team.
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