Hire freelancers and transform your business now

You can inject new life into a tired business when you hire freelancers.

Freelancing is becoming increasingly popular. There are so many people that have learned the value in remote work and having more choice in their working lives. If companies don’t keep remote work on the menu, (which many won’t for all sorts of reasons), I predict there will be a heck of a lot more freelancers entering the workforce.

And why wouldn’t they? They’ve gotten a taste of life outside needless presenteeism. They haven’t had to make choices between being there for their kids, health or own stress levels. There’s no real incentive to go back to a world where workers trudge up to the office for reasons unknown.

You as an employer shouldn’t view this as a negative. Because nothing could be further from the truth. If you hire freelancers, you bring a level of expertise, insight and ability to the table that you can benefit from enormously.

Here are some of the ways hiring freelancers in your workplace can really help you succeed

You’re hiring for the good of the project

One of the first obvious benefits is that sometimes, you need someone who is a high achiever for a campaign, roll out or to begin a new phase in your company. That doesn’t mean you need that person for 12 months or three years.

By hiring for a skillset, you need for a project or transitional time, you have the ability to save money on a longer salary. Plus, you also don’t have that less than desirable choice of choosing someone with less skill because they already exist on the payroll. Or forgoing the insights and expertise at a critical time.

Some of the ways you can bring in a freelancer to help with a project include:

• Bringing in a freelance writer to consult on the new website copy and content strategy
• Having a contractor IT specialist to do all the automation legwork so you can take over management later
• Getting individuals that don’t have friendships, vested interests or too much attachment to existing processes, revenue models etc to come through and re-jig the direction or strategy
• Contracting instructional designers to design, review and/or document processes and build training works that HR or others can activate later
• Refreshing your photography and design in line with a brand refresh, pivot in direction and more
• Letting a personal assistant or virtual assistant get rid of the scrappy bits of work you never get to so that you can start anew
• Outsourcing your social media management so that it’s consistent and community orientated (as opposed to patchy and posted simply because ‘everybody is doing it’)

You get the picture. You can also find a lot of those freelancers at places like the Freelance Jungle talent directory. Or dedicated websites like Pointer Remote, Rachel’s List, Fabulate and Circlesource. 

You can benefit from a fresh perspective

All workplaces fall into ruts, bad habits and get trained to listen to existing, louder voices. It’s the nature of comfortable workplaces that we create a butt groove in the company couch we’re all familiar with.

Making the culture change when it starts feeling a little lived in can be difficult. Companies spend thousands of dollars on change consultants and team building activities, only to find people revert fairly quickly back to their own ways.

The true secrets to keeping a workplace fresh and agile are introducing new people of influence and keeping everyone else learning in the meantime.

You can combine the two when you hire freelancers.

Hiring a freelancer to help steer the ship into better waters allows you the freedom to get out from underneath company bias, old loyalties and attachment to processes that don’t serve anyone. It also reinvigorates workers who get their passions ignited. Plus, it breaks down the same old, same old.

Bringing someone in to act as a freelancer and introducing learning new things or working on new projects outside a role can do a lot for your existing workforce. There are people in every organisation who are too tired. And there are people who are tired of the people who are tired running the show.

This is a great way of sending the signal to someone wanting to recover their vigour and verve that you support it.

We’re leaner in our approach

One of the issues freelancers have with clients is that you expect us to be available Monday to Friday and during business hours. But most freelancers don’t need that amount of time to do the work you require.

We’re leaner. We don’t have the meetings to attend. We don’t have to worry about the drain of office politics (or even politeness) to consider. We also set ourselves the goal of the work product doing the talking.

Plus, freelancers have in-built deadlines that usually got us into freelancing in the first place. We’ve got kids to pick up or disabilities to manage. We’ve got life on the farm to contend with. Or exams to study for.

Or frankly, just better places to be than hitting refresh on Outlook, hoping someone emails.

We’ve left presenteeism behind and we can pass the benefits onto you.

In short, most freelancers pull off in five hours what the average office worker takes eight to complete. And we do so without getting caught up in who did what at the Christmas party.

Why not benefit from a revving engine speeding up the process on occasion?

We know things you don’t

It’s true that freelancers may not know your culture. But we definitely know the industry guidelines and where the lines are drawn, legally, socially and in best practice.

Bringing someone in to consult on accounting, legal, medical writing, food regulations, how warehousing works – whatever the situation – can save you a lot of money.

I’ve spoken to clients in my time who benefited from me knowing social media best practice and health writing expectations. I’ve dealt with clients who didn’t want to listen and have made costly mistakes with how they marketed because they didn’t understand burgeoning scenes and their legal requirements.

The new pride movements, the growth in technology, the linguistic changes, the expectations people have socially and morally plus the pandemic have led to unprecedented change. Not only in how we do the things we do, but how we explain and deliver them.

Nobody expects you to know everything. But they do expect you to make an effort.

you can hire freelancers to help you do that through providing services such as:

• Sensitivity readers for marketing collateral, policy documents, press releases and more
• Representation of Disability, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities in media, creative development and writing
• Community managers that are well-versed and well-trained in cultural requirements, best practice and guidelines
• Lawyers, accountants and other advisors who are staying abreast of the changes as they arrive
• Regional advisors and growth experts that can help you close the city and country divide
• Disaster and contingency planning to avoid the problems – and deal with the ones you don’t see coming.

In a volatile world, it helps to get outside freelance input from professionals who are navigating the changes as part of their daily lives.

The change is coming. Isn’t it better to pay the money to have that marketing campaign or agency work for a client or training manual meet what is required of a changing world? It’s certainly better for your budget, reputation and longevity to get proactive over scrambling with the virtual mop and bucket, getting defensive.

Don’t wait for change to happen to you. Embrace it on better terms with the help of freelancers.

Want to find out how you can work effectively with freelancers? I’ve got over 6700 Australian freelancers via my work with the Freelance Jungle community you can meet. For anything from burlesque dancing through to patent registration.

Come talk to me and let’s get you experiencing how good freelancers can be for your business now.