You’d be hard-pressed to find a modern small business that doesn’t regularly work with freelancers. From matters concerning tech to content creation to large-scale renovations, virtually every small business benefits from contract labor. Needless to say, if your business develops a reputation for mistreating freelancers, you’re liable to have trouble attracting top talent or getting the best performances out of your current freelancers. Small business owners looking for effective ways to attract talented freelancers can benefit from the following pointers.
Be Upfront About Your Expectations
It should come as no surprise that freelancers hate when clients are vague about their expectations. In addition to proving extremely frustrating for the people doing the work, a lack of clarity can also result in finished products that aren’t at all what you wanted. With this in mind, make a point of being as clear and upfront as possible when outlining your expectations for jobs. This will help ensure that everyone is on the same page from the get-go and dramatically reduce your chances of being disappointed by the work your freelancers produce.
By extension, you should actively encourage freelancers to reach out to you whenever they have questions or require clarification on any aspects of a job. Some businesses discourage freelancers from doing this by characterizing it as unprofessional, but at the end of the day, they’re only hurting themselves by adopting such an approach. Making yourself available to address questions not only makes freelancers’ jobs easier, it effectively diminishes the odds of miscommunications and increases the likelihood of you being pleased with the final product.
Being upfront about expectations is particularly important when you’re having repairs or renovations done in your workplace. Given how much money such jobs tend to cost, it’s in your best interest to make your expectations crystal clear from the very beginning. Good contractor license management software can also prove helpful when undertaking these types of jobs.
Provide Advancement Opportunities
Providing advancement opportunities to long-time contractors can serve your business well in a number of ways. For starters, it will help you retain top talent and illustrate how much you appreciate the efforts of certain contractors. Secondly, it will encourage other contractors to work with your business and put their best foot forward when approaching jobs.
When it comes to advancement opportunities for contractors, there are two key options: pay raises and full-time employment. For example, if a long-time contractor has been working for the same rates for years, providing them with a raise can be a great way to keep them on board and working hard. Additionally, as rents, gas prices, and other basic necessities become more expensive, it’s reasonable to expect that wages would rise, too.
Over time, some businesses find themselves in need of certain types of specialized work on a very consistent basis – so consistent a basis, in fact, that it may facilitate the need for freelance positions to become full-time opportunities. When such a need arises, it’s in your best to offer these positions to freelancers with whom you’ve worked for a long time and who have proven consistently reliable. This gives other contractors something to work towards and effectively rewards high-performing freelancers for their efforts.
Allow Remote Work
Provided the type of work a freelancer’s doing doesn’t absolutely require them to be present in your workplace, all contractors should be permitted to work remotely. Since these individuals aren’t receiving salaries or benefits, they shouldn’t be expected to fulfill the same obligations as regular employees. Furthermore, some freelancers juggle multiple clients at once, and having to report to an office stands to throw a wrench into their respective work schedules. As such, it’s easy to see why allowing remote work can help your business retain and attract talented contractors.
There’s little wonder as to why small businesses find freelance labor so attractive. In addition to getting certain jobs done in a timely and efficient manner, freelancers are highly cost-effective. After all, if capital is very limited, it’s only natural that a business owner would opt for contract labor over bringing more people on full-time. Of course, this isn’t to say that freelancers should be regarded as pushovers. Failure to heed the advice outlined above is liable to hinder your business’s ability to attract dutiful, dependable freelancers.
