How to work with a freelancer?

 

Does your company have special needs and you don't have the expertise in-house? It's time to work with freelancers! Whether you're a start-up, an SME or a large organization, calling on freelancers is always an option and offers many advantages.

1. Why choose a freelancer?

Freelancers are professionals who have decided to go it alone, and are not fond of hierarchical corporate organization and teamwork. They work on their own, according to their own timetable and rates, on assignments of limited duration. This is often more profitable for your company.

The real concern is to find the right one! The freelancer who will be compatible with your needs. Ask yourself what your needs really are, and whether you can handle the project in-house. If not, evaluate the budget you intend to use for this assignment, and find out what's more cost-effective for your company: hiring someone on a fixed-term contract or calling in a freelancer? Many companies find many advantages in opting for the second solution!

Today, there are more and more freelancers on the market, and making a choice remains a challenge. You'll probably start by comparing the price of services, which will help you make an initial selection, and the same applies to the location of service providers. If you need someone to work with you on your premises or on site, the choice will be less wide-ranging than if you call on someone who can work remotely and provide you with the various deliverables digitally.

 

During the research process, you need to ask yourself the right questions in order to convey the right information about the mission:

• What skills are you looking for?
• What experiences?
• What freelancers are expected to do
• What deliverable?
• Dates and duration

 

Once you've made your choice, i.e. once you've selected just under a dozen freelancers, it's imperative to have a clear brief that you've drawn up with your colleagues or superiors. The brief is invaluable in guiding the rest of the project in the direction you've chosen. An unclear brief, lacking crucial elements, can slow down the mission, or even lead to failure. If the deliverables don't meet your expectations, question your initial instructions, those given in the brief.

How can you start working with your freelancer before the assignment begins?

Draw up a complete set of specifications or a letter of engagement. This should contain the following essential elements:

• Why this project? Explain your needs, your vision and briefly describe the mission's objectives.
• Who you are: explain what your company does and what its values are
• Give a brief overview of the team's composition, other stakeholders and the company's operations.
• Project stages: outline the schedule and objectives for each stage
• Deliverables and what you expect
• Working conditions: environment, equipment available, whether remote or on your premises, etc.

There are several advantages to hiring a freelancer. According to manager-go.com, these are the main ones:

• Avoid the rigidity of a fixed-term contract
• Use expert skills: freelancers work better and faster, and will cost you less than an employee.
• Expand your network
• Immediate availability
• Recruit as many people as you like if you're not satisfied

 

There are not many limitations:

• There are confidentiality risks: there's no guarantee that some of your information won't be shared with other freelance clients, who may be your competitors.
• Nor is there any guarantee that a freelancer is really an expert in his or her field. By using agencies, the risks are reduced.
• Finally, having a freelancer who's good at what they do and who's a perfect fit for you is hard to find.

What are the characteristics of freelancers?

As the name suggests, they work solo. But what most characterizes these self-starters is their passion for what they do. They are autonomous and have acquired a certain experience over the years that enables them to work independently.

Generally speaking, they express the need to work in freedom, without the restrictions that can be imposed by companies and teamwork.

Independents also have ideas and opinions to defend, and a clear vision of what they want to achieve. Their determination makes them highly talented, but also difficult to integrate into a team accustomed to collaborating and sharing ideas to reach consensus.

These self-employed profiles demonstrate great rigor and a facility for adapting to different types of assignment, sometimes for very different companies. Their active listening and desire to strive for excellence make them reliable individuals.

2. Use resource planning to assign freelancers to missions and tasks.

A resource planning tool has many advantages for your company. When you're in charge of a project, making a resource planning is essential to improve the project flow process by assigning each resource where it's needed. A tool enables you to do this even more efficiently, thanks to the visibility it provides on the various resources and their availability, workload, time and other elements useful to the smooth running of your project management.

 

Read this article on resource planning and its benefits

 

When you work with freelancers, you can include them in your management of resource planning. And as you do for every project, list the other resources you need, whether material or human. Then make your schedule and estimate the costs, and start allocating your resources to the various tasks, your freelancer included.

By using a tool from resource planning, you benefit from real-time visibility of your employees' skills, performance and project progress. Everyone has the opportunity to enter their data, and this creates greater collaboration and connectivity within the company and among the teams working on a project.

Remote working has reinforced this need for communication, and the resource planning management tool is a means of centralizing data and exchanges. What many people are looking for today are tools that make it easier to adapt to remote working, and the upheavals of the last two years have highlighted certain weaknesses in some companies. That's why using software like Stafiz to manage your teams and projects, in addition to your administrative management, is essential for greater productivity and responsiveness on the part of your employees and freelancers - who will feel more involved in the company.

Each person, once assigned to a task, can organize his or her own schedule and report progress, difficulties and performance to the resource planning tool. This enables better overall monitoring at a time when planning, reporting and teamwork are becoming increasingly complicated.

 

Read this article for more information on how to use a resource planning

3. Integrate freelancers into the company and the team

Freelancers, despite the fact that they work to their own schedule and (their own rules), are most effective when they are well integrated into the team, and into the company. Here are a few mistakes to avoid when working with a freelancer, according to an article by Crème de la crème, a freelance platform:

• Poor communication before, during and at the end of the project: this is even more important when working remotely. Don't forget to communicate all the information you need to ensure that your project progresses smoothly. (schedule changes, missing equipment, etc.)
• Lack of integration
• Administrative worries and payment delays
• Failing to take the time to get to know him and understand his way of working

The aim is to build a trusting, lasting relationship with him, so that we can perhaps work together again in the future.

 

The importance of remaining flexible and adaptable:

Use tools that enable you to work remotely, for example, so that you can exchange information quickly, share documents, etc.

By giving freelancers access to as much information as possible, the visibility they gain will enable them to be more efficient in their tasks and feel more involved in your company.

Here are 4 tips for working closely with your freelancers:

As you are used to doing with company employees, act as you would with them:

1. Express your satisfaction
2. Remind everyone of their roles and define certain rules
3. Be available, listen
4. Make exchange possible

The experience of a freelancer at Stafiz

Interview with Cyril Coulange

"How long have you been freelancing?

This took place in several stages. The first was to set up the legal structure over a year ago. Then I had to define my offer. I knew I wanted to be independent, but having spent ten years or so in consulting and finance, I was capable of doing quite a lot, and I had a pretty broad offering. I really had to define what I wanted to offer and the best way to penetrate the market to get customers quickly.

It took me a while. I started my website, and I also did a few jobs here and there, but they weren't very targeted and I didn't do any canvassing.

I started defining my offer in September 2020 by making my website. I thought it would be a good showcase. I put my offer into production in October 2020, and I've been actively working on it ever since. Technically, there are three of them: on the one hand, closing automation and the implementation of reporting tools. On the other hand, financial and strategic consulting in a slightly broader sense, to assist with mergers and acquisitions, and so on. Finally, I have a part-time CFO offer, which is the one I sell the most. I work with customers to take care of the entire financial function.

 

What kind of customers do you have?

I have a core clientele, but it's very broad. They range from very young companies - such as clients who don't yet have legal status - to consulting firms with sales in the tens of millions of euros. My core clientele tend to be start-ups that have been in business for between two and four years, with sales of between 1 and 5 million euros, who need reporting such as forecasts to be able to make strategic decisions; or because they have investors who need regular reporting on their investments.  

What can a freelancer bring to a company or project?

In finance, for example: Managers do all the financial work themselves, and they're perfectly capable of doing it, but it's time-consuming and takes up a lot of their time. It's time they can't spend on their business. The advantage of working with a service provider is that they can take care of this part of the business, freeing the manager to concentrate on the operational side and delegate.

The advantage for the company is that this is a very flexible status. If there's a very high demand, or a need for a service, the company will be able to hire a "made-to-measure" service provider. If there are months when there is less need, the company simply doesn't call on him. The service provider adapts to the customer's activity and budget.

It's expensive for a company today to hire someone, and it's not very flexible if it doesn't go well. With a freelancer, we can monitor the budget very closely and decide whether or not to call on their services.

It can happen that things don't go well between a service provider and a company, in which case it's very easy to terminate a contract.

 

Is it more profitable to turn to a freelancer, or to hire someone?

It depends a lot on the profile. In the finance function, for a comparable budget, we can bring in a freelancer with 10 years' experience for 2 to 3 days a week in a company for the same price as a full-time junior with just two years' seniority. The senior employee will work fewer days, but will be more effective in 3 days than a junior in a week.

 

What was your best customer experience? Or your favorite assignment?

My favorite assignment is with a company that's 4 years old and that I've been working with for several months. I work with a team of seven people, and it's a very active company that's developing well. The managers are very sensible and have a good head on their shoulders. It's very interesting because it's an exchange with people who know my business. Things are going very well and we have a lot to offer each other. We work together for the good of the company.

It's nice compared to what I used to do in the office, which was more one-off assignments lasting from a week to a few months, where we built up a relationship with the customer, but in the end, at the end of the assignment we handed in a report and never saw the customer again.

As a freelancer, I can build real relationships and intervene on a recurring basis, which facilitates communication and interest in the mission.

 

Sometimes customers don't know what to expect before working with freelancers. In your opinion and experience, what should customers know before they call on your services? What advice would you give them to help them get to know your business and the way you work?

I don't know exactly how freelancers work in general. I was lucky enough to work in a consulting firm for a long time, and I was trained in the firm's strict procedures. The service I offer today is a practice, which is cheaper and more flexible, because I have fewer clients than when I was in a practice. I'm closer to my customers, so it makes sense to go through a service provider rather than a consulting firm. After that, you need to benchmark and compare the different service providers who can work on your project. You have to look at those who are the most competent to carry out the mission.

 

How can choosing to work with a freelancer rather than hiring someone full-time guarantee the success of a project?

Flexibility and know-how. Freelancers generally know their trade inside out, because they've been doing it for several years. They're familiar with the assignments they'll be offered, whereas a new recruit will need to be trained, as his or her level will be lower.

 

Can you share your experience as a service provider on a Stafiz assignment?

I worked for one of your customers, on the onboarding of the Stafiz solution. The customer had a problem with the format of his Excel databases. I worked with you to get everything back into shape and integrate the customer's data into Stafiz as it should be. It was an IT consultancy, and I had no financial input whatsoever.

It was in September/October last year and it was very interesting. It was during the period when I was still defining my offer, so it was very interesting to work on these issues that I hadn't been confronted with before. I worked a lot with the customer face to face, without going through Stafiz.

 

So you weren't really part of the team, you just worked with this Stafiz customer?

Exactly. In the end, I was more a service provider for the customer than for Stafiz.

 

What is your general feeling? Are you well integrated into the teams or do you work more solo?

It depends on the customer, but some are used to working with service providers, so we're well integrated and part of the team. We even have e-mail addresses in the company's name. But there are also customers who are less accustomed to working with service providers, and with whom I continue to work under the banner of my consulting firm. Generally speaking, communication goes very well, and today we're lucky enough to have tools that enable us to communicate in real time, like Slack and Teams (depending on the team).

So I've never had any problems with my customers. Since we're providing them with a solution, it's in their interest to communicate well and provide us with all the documents we need, and for us to feel at ease in the team. As the clock is ticking, it's in their interest that things go smoothly and quickly. We work with customers for the good of the company.

 

Thank you Cyril."

 

 

Other source: joptimisemonsite