Employees usually go through an orientation that informs them of the company's goals, how they can help achieve them and why. However, the gig economy is seeing many full-time employees being replaced by freelancers.
These newcomers usually don't have the same view of the business as full-time employees. Companies, therefore, need to find a way to align these freelancers with their goals to ensure they have a solid understanding of the business and why they were contracted.
Going through a month of orientation is not feasible, since they aren't a core part of the business and are only needed for specific situations and projects. So how can a company successfully align its freelancers with its mission? To help, 12 experts from Forbes Agency Council provide their best recommendations below.
Forbes Agency Council members explore ways for leaders to align freelancers with their company's business goals.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.1. Hire Coachable Freelancers
It starts with hiring coachable freelancers. From there, it falls on leadership to clearly explain the objective per project in great detail and to express expectations prior to the start of each project. Having itemized project task lists is a great way to keep freelancers accountable while having trackable benchmarks for leadership to quality-check performance. - Tony Pec, Y Not You Media
2. Hire Them For Attitude
Don't just hire freelancers for skills. Hire them for attitude. At the end of the day, skills can be taught. I've seen many examples when our freelancers learned on the go and demonstrated amazing results. When they are genuinely interested in working with you, and when you treat them as your team members, meeting company goals is not going to be a problem. - Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
3. Give Them Full Transparency
Give them full transparency into the business, just as you would for an employee. This includes allowing them to understand the bigger scope of work, what went into getting the business and the ins and outs and ups and downs of working with the clients or team. Knowledge is power. - Carm Lyman, Lyman Agency
4. Create Standard Operating Procedures
Training new offshore team members and freelancers can be quite the challenge if you don't have the right systems in place. Standard operating procedures are highly effective at training new talent. They help break down the process step by step in a written document. You can also make video SOPs and host them on platforms such as Trainual to make your training and onboarding process smooth. - Alex Quin, UADV
5. Treat Them As An Extension Of The Team
I like to treat freelancers as an extension of my team, so we onboard them as we would any staff member by teaching them our ethos ("underpromise and overdeliver") and making sure that their way of communicating is one that will keep the entire team connected. Goals are easy to put in black and white, but the emotions of a team and poor communications are hard to bounce back from. - Christopher Tompkins, The Go! Agency
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
6. Rally Them Behind The Mission And Vision
Freelancers, employees or contractors should rally behind the mission and vision of your agency. They need to be onboarded even if it's for a project, so consider making an onboarding track for non-full-time employees. If everyone understands the "why" of the company—the culture, the essence, if you will—then the work itself will usually represent the agency no matter how long the talent stays. - Julie Veloz, IPG
7. Clearly Define Expectations
Clarity is critical when assigning work to outside parties. For this reason, all working relationships with freelancers or contractors should start with a clearly defined set of expectations. Ensure everyone is on the same page before any work begins by outlining not only what their role in the project is, but also why it matters and how it relates to the company’s overarching goals. - Adam Binder, Creative Click Media
8. Give Contractors Enough Work
Give contractors enough work that they want to buy in and learn more about your agency. It's better to give a freelance writer 20 hours of work per week, and commit to that by contract, than to spread that work out among four or five writers. You'll never get true commitment from freelancers if you don't show that same kind of commitment to them. - Scott Baradell, Idea Grove
9. Bring Agility To Your Creative Process
Use Slack. Don't rely on stagnant creative briefs. Invest the time in onboarding the right freelancer. It should involve one-on-one attention in addition to team meetings. Let them ask "stupid" questions in a no-pressure setting. Have your workflow designed to share files and assets with the freelancer effortlessly. Use a DesignOps approach to eliminate hassle. - Kashif Zaman, Uptok
10. Have Them Sit In On Key Meetings
After you sign a non-disclosure agreement, give your contractors the opportunity to sit in on key meetings. Create a formal onboarding program and a Google Doc (or other shared file) where they can find resources. Above all, invest in training time. Even the sharpest professional will have at least a 30- to 90-day learning curve. Consider hiring seasoned contractors. You may spend a bit more but save hours and money in the long run. - Nancy A Shenker, theONswitch
11. Always Have An Initial Conversation
Never just send a brief over to a freelancer without an initial conversation. They need to be walked through the history of the agency-client relationship and the marketing objective of the client in addition to what's at stake for the agency. Express the importance of the particular assignment so that they're motivated to give it the same level of blood, sweat and tears a full-time employee would. - Russ Williams, Archer Malmo
12. Rely On Their Creativity And Input
Freelancers often have a lot of experience and can provide much more value when they're relied on for their creativity and input. I often communicate the organization's goals, then the project goals, and let the freelancer understand the guidelines that they are free to work within. Value their input, and you'll often see expectations exceeded! - Douglas Karr, Highbridge
