Everyone can realize the difficulty of managing individuals and organizations. If you are a manager, you have to manage many different people with different characteristics, personalities, and work habits. When your team has freelancers, your management can be twice as hard, even much more. Besides the usual challenges, sometimes you may manage people you have never met face-to-face yet and freelancers from a distance.

So managing freelancers effectively is one of the top challenges that require you to resolve right away. In this blog, we would like to discuss some tips to help you manage your team of freelancers and make the most out of the freelance force within your company.

How to effectively manage a team of freelancer

1. Build relationships with your freelancers

Remember that each freelancer is your business partner. When you’ve hired your ideal and dependable freelancers to work with you, you need to spend your time and effort to build relationships with them as closely as possible.

Cultivating these relationships requires you to treat them the same as you treat your regular employees. You should have a better picture of their characteristics, personalities, and work style. You can include them in the company culture (if time and other factors allow). You can show that you really care about the freelancers’ careers, provide them with quality projects, and promptly support them to complete projects well. Find mutual something you can share and work to build a positive connection. Your freelancers will trust you more, so you can improve interaction and the quality of work freelancers provide.

2. Define project details

With any project, you should communicate with all members who will join to help them have a clear understanding of the project. Your freelancers are no exception. They should know why you hired them, and what they need to do in the project. You can get the final result that meets your expectations if you clearly define all project details. The best place to start is in your job description when you post a job.

You fully explain the project details, including project requirements, expectations, deadlines, meeting agendas, and who they need to report to. Doing this allows you to manage your team of freelancers successfully.

2.1 Define project requirements

With every project, you need to define project requirements first. Whether your regular team members or your freelancers will conduct the project, all project members should know the full requirements. They should have a clear picture of what needs to be done, what resources they need to use, and how they plan their time and project process.

2.2 Define project expectations

Each project will be expected to be completed to meet certain demands. Project expectations could be project objectives, measures of success, deadlines, necessary materials, project budget, changes in the scope of work, priorities, and deliverables.

Project expectations have to be defined clearly to communicate them to the freelancers working on the project. When project members know project expectations, they will keep more accountable to improve their productivity and complete their tasks well.

2.3 Define project deadlines

Project deadlines are one of the most important project expectations. If your project meets the deadlines and requirements to deliver on time at the required quality, your business will get high reliability from the clients and more opportunities to take part in big projects.

Based on project objectives and expectations, so you define your project deadlines - how much time you’ll need to complete the goal of projects. Make deadline estimates, your project member can arrange their time suitably to ensure the progress project.

2.4 Define meeting agendas

Before starting your project, you arrange the first meeting to explain the project basics and introduce other people your freelancer will work with. Because your freelancers are not familiar with company culture, you should share with them what apps your team uses, how you communicate, and how you want to see ideas presented.

When the project is conducted, you have to ensure your freelancers keep on the right track. You can set up daily meetings or weekly meetings via Skype, Google Meet, or another communication channel. The meeting gives your team interactive opportunities and stays updated with the project’s progress.

2.5 Define reporting details

Working with freelancers requires you to manage from a distance, when your team of freelancers works at different times, and locations. So if you want your team to work smoothly and perform at the highest level, you need to define reporting details. Including how often they need to report, who the right person receiving the report is, and what needs to be sent. You make this clear, the freelancers will know the process and their tasks, and make the most of their time to complete hired and contracted work.

3. Set the budget for freelancers

Before hiring freelancers, you determine your budget that suits the project details mentioned above and your financial ability. Your agreement with any freelancer should set a specific budget for the work and stick to it. Doing this helps you estimate the overall amount that pays freelancers and ensures balance in your annual budget.

Depending on the signed agreement, you will pay your freelancers based on an hourly rate, a fixed fee, or other ways. Respect your freelancer, you have to pay separately for any additional work. Your freelancers are responsible for completing the project to meet the work requirement at the negotiated rate.

4. Use project management tool

Project management tools play an important role in the success of any project, especially the project that has freelancers joining. A project management tool will help you a lot manage overall the project, from the human resources, and budget to the progress.

Some efficient and popular project management tools that will help you manage freelancers include Asana, Trello, Instagantt, Basecamp, Monday.com, Jira, etc.

5. Time tracking

Time tracking is an essential work that helps people keep track of the time everyone spends on different tasks and activities in a day. With jobs that require you to pay at an hourly rate as a freelance job, determining the amount of time is especially important. Thanks to time tracking, you can easily manage your team as well as every freelancer can evaluate their efficiency and try to improve it.

Many different tools or apps you can use to track freelancer time. For example, Toggl, Upwork, Harvest, Everhour, Clockify, Screenshot, Timebee, etc. You can find out the features, the pros, and cons, and more related information about each time tracking tool and apps above by reading our blog: 10 Best Time Tracking Apps to Try in 2021.

6. Use effective communication tools

Whether your freelancers work from, if you have effective communication, your project team always has interactive opportunities. They can make the connection, build close relationships with each other, and together improve productivity. So it is essential to find and use efficient communication tools that suit your team of freelance.

Some effective communication tools you can try: Skype, Slack, Twist, Podio, Fuze, and Wrike. Each tool has its own different features, pros, and cons. You need to try one to select the right tool for your project. Using an efficient communication tool helps your team provide feedback quickly, update promptly, avoid unexpected issues, and lead to increase overall productivity.

Conclusion

We would like to share with you six tips to manage your team of freelancers effectively. Depending on your business and your freelance team, you can customize your management to improve your team’s performance and productivity. Collaboration with freelancers can help you a lot in different aspects, so let’s try to know and improve the way you manage and work with them.