When it comes to in-office positions, many companies realize that some aren’t necessary. For a lot of places in businesses of all sizes and niches, the job of an office worker can be done by a freelancer working from home.
This is why over the last couple of years, more and more companies have started outsourcing work to freelancers. However, while freelancing brings many benefits to both the company and the freelancers themselves, managers often struggle with managing a team of people who work from home.
If you’re struggling with this, here are the tips to help you succeed.
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Be a better leader
Not everyone can be a natural-born leader. If you’re in a leadership position, you might be struggling with learning how to be a good leader. This is a common problem in organizations as only 48% of employees view their company’s leadership as high quality.
What can you do to turn yourself into the leader your freelancers deserve? For starters, do the following:
- Have good communication skills. – A good leader knows how to express themselves in words that ensure their team understands them and feels inspired at the same time. This goes for everything from delegating responsibilities to giving out praise or critiquing.
- Practice empathy. – Learn how to put yourself in your freelancer’s shoes. This helps you understand them better and empathize with everything they’re going through.
- Be productive. – If you want your team to be productive, you need to set an example for them with your productivity. If you work hard to accomplish your duties, so will they.
- Don’t control, lead. – Nobody wants to work for a boss who monitors their every movement and micromanages them. So, don’t control your freelancers. Instead, show them you trust them enough to take on their responsibilities.
If you want to make sure you develop all these skills and everything else a good leader needs to have, you can take leadership training courses to help you achieve your goals.
Use an FMS tool
Hiring and managing freelancers has become much easier since freelance management systems came into the market. An effective freelance management system tool needs to be an irreplaceable part of your toolkit because there is a lot you can do with it.
Here are just some of the benefits:
Ensured compliance. – There are a lot of compliance standards you need to meet when working with freelancers. Luckily, an FMS tool has built-in workflows that allow you to monitor and track compliance. This helps you avoid any potential penalties for non-compliance.
Simplified payments. – If you’re working with multiple freelancers, paying each of them is very time-consuming. Some might have different payment terms or require payment in other currencies. With this tool, the entire payment process is streamlined.
Finding the right people for the job. – One of the tips for hiring and managing a remote team is to hire the right people, and you can do that with an FMS tool. You will have a centralized talent pool, making it easier to find people with the skills you need. To achieve harmony in the hiring process, it’s crucial to know the best countries for outsourcing software development.
Streamlining the onboarding process. – To ensure the people you hire understand your organization’s needs and requirements, they need to go through the perfect onboarding process. With your FMS tool, you can create a process to ensure that.
Set clear expectations and requirements
Ensure each freelancer you hire has a thorough understanding of what is expected and required from them. If you give vague explanations, you can’t expect your team to understand what you need from them. So, the work they produce won’t be satisfactory.
Apart from explaining what the result of a project needs to look like, it would help if you also talked about deadlines, budgets, and how to use the tools and materials you provide.
But your explanations shouldn’t just be focused on the deliverables. You should also explain your company’s protocols, culture, and values. This way, they will always understand what kind of team they’re a part of and be able to produce good results.
Make sure you’re saving money
Cost reduction is the number one reason for outsourcing for 70% of companies. Many costs are associated with hiring in-house staff that isn’t required when hiring freelancers. However, you need to ensure you’re saving money with your freelancers.
If you’re outsourcing the work that an in-house staff member would otherwise handle, it will be easy to calculate if and how much money you’re saving. Compare how much money you used to spend on that in-house employee and compare it to the relevant freelancer cost.
However, if you’ve outsourced a completely new task, you need to determine how much money would be spent if you worked with an in-house team member. The best way to do this is to calculate rough estimates by looking at industry standards.
Conclusion
Hiring freelancers allows you to choose from millions of talented people located anywhere in the world. You no longer have to limit yourself to searching for people in your area but can hire talent from different cities or countries. And if you manage them properly, you will see the many benefits of working with them.