If you’re searching for help or insight on your business but don’t have the resources to hire full-time staff members, contract employees are a great alternative. This type of work arrangement is on the rise today, and many professionals are even pursuing freelance gigs as their main source of income.
However, hiring contractors requires a bit of homework on your part. The members of Forbes Agency Council are familiar with managing workers in the gig economy and have a few important tips for ensuring a successful partnership. Based on their advice, here’s how you can make sure freelancers and contractors understand the goals of your agency and/or project.
1. Vet Them Thoroughly
Proper vetting is crucial. Ask potential freelancers about their processes, values and vision to ensure that they align with your own. This starts your working relationship off on the right foot. When you have found a close match, send them an example so they have a clear understanding of your goals and what you expect. - Bernard May, National Positions
2. Show Them Your Passion And Guide Them
It’s all about passion. If the employee is passionate about what they do, they will do their best to try and understand the goals of your agency. The best tip is to truly show them your passion and guide them in the process. No one will completely understand your goal, but the best thing to do is to guide them. - Cagan Sean Yuksel, GRAFX CO.
3. Offer Incentives For Outstanding Performance
Articulating the role, the project and the opportunity for future work and engagement is critical to reinforcement. Get to know your freelancer’s priorities as they perform for you and incentivize them when they exceed your expectations. - Matthew Abenante, Porter, LeVay & Rose, Inc.
4. Give Them The Proper Background And Context
Freelancers are totally blind to the client’s preferred tone, goals and personality. We don’t like anyone operating at a deficit at our company. After they sign a non-disclosure agreement, we add as much color as we can to the brief so they understand the details and nuances of each project and brand path. In the end, we get much better work, waste less time and align each talented person more with the team. - Sean Looney, Looney Advertising & Branding
5. Involve Them Early And Frequently
My top tip for working with freelance or contract employees is to involve them early and involve them frequently. Keep the lines of communication open, and give these employees a chance to meet all of the principals of your firm and the client for whom they are working. Having a freelancer meet the client does a better job of vesting him or her in a project while they get to know the personalities. - April Joy Rudin, The Rudin Group
6. Follow The Same Hiring Process You Use For Regular Employees
Put the same rigor around hiring freelancers as you would a full-time employee and aim to develop a relationship with them that goes beyond a one-project engagement. Treating them as a part of your team fosters trust and a commitment from them and a better understanding of your business and client needs, and it will yield efficiencies in communication with the rest of your team. - Keri Witman, Cleriti
7. Set Clear Expectations
When working with freelancers, it’s important to give them as many details as possible about the project in the beginning. This will not only help set them up for success, but also reduce the back-and-forth, question-and-answer that may happen if it’s unclear what’s expected of them. - Matt Bowman, Thrive Internet Marketing Agency
8. Over-Communicate
You can’t over-communicate timelines, expectations or needs with freelance and contract employees. Many times, freelance and contract employees are task- and tactics-oriented. Guidelines provide the structure and accountability they need to accomplish specific tasks for projects in which they aren’t responsible for producing the end results associated with overall strategy. - Evangeline Sutton, Regenerative Marketing LLC
9. Keep Them Engaged
Often, agencies treat freelance resources as if they live behind a curtain, keeping them at arm’s length from both internal teams and clients. I’ve always taken the opposite approach, with full engagement during assignments and full transparency and involvement with clients. This has driven better work that is far more connected to the overall agency ideas and executions. - Scott Elser, Digital Current