Permanence isn’t a pre-requisite to creating value.
Marcus Westbury
Australian organisations need to take creating a freelance-friendly workplace culture seriously.
Your profit, organisational culture and reputation depend on it.
Does your business rely on freelancers? We need to talk
Bringing a freelancer to your office looks a little like this:
1. Post the ad
2. Find the person
3. Bring them in
4. Throw them the work
5. Pay them
6. Show them out the door
Seems simple enough, right? Wrong.
Freelancers may be able to walk in the door and landing on their feet. But that doesn’t mean you should get complacent.
I can count on my dog’s left paw how many organisations have taken the time to foster a freelance-friendly workplace culture.
How your organisation presents itself to that freelancer matters. If your workplace culture can’t deal with freelance talent, you’re risking the benefits and inviting trouble. You’re giving your staff and that freelancer a reason to feel ill-at-ease or even unwanted.
Stress has a productivity cost. You can assemble the dream team to end all dream teams. If they can’t function together, what’s the point?
Yet the fix is so damn simple!
Let me help you create a freelance-friendly workplace culture
From tweaks to transformation, I can help you make the most of your freelance talent in creating a freelance-friendly workplace culture by:
Improving your baseline communication strategies
so freelancers don’t need intimate knowledge of current core processes to be effective.
Assessing your current workplace
and designing strategies to help you streamline vetting, onboarding, team integration, work processes, team building and more.
Making recommendations to accommodate telecommuting
to tap into talent across the country (instead of only freelancers that can catch a bus to your office).
Shaking off the shackles of overwork, presenteeism, worker distrust
and other negative behaviours that make quality work difficult when using freelancers or overall
Inviting critical thinking
that gives you the inside scoop on where the strengths and weaknesses of freelancers lie for your organisation.
Developing policies, strategies and ideas
that can help you enhance teamwork and build a bank of freelance talent that will want to work with you again and again.
Why me?
I’m not a traditional organisational coach. I’m somewhat of a universal translator when it comes to the freelance culture meets client adventure. I’ve been freelancing full time since 2010, and the founder of one of the largest groups of Australian freelancers, the Freelance Jungle. The membership numbers in the thousands. Many of whom regularly seek advice and guidance on how to work in all kinds of workplace cultures and settings better.
I’ve also worked in both agency and private company environments that have made use of freelancers for most of my 30-year working career.
If anyone knows what it takes to make a workplace culture truly freelance-friendly, it’s me.
How I work
The scope of the transformation required depends on your organisation and what your goals are. Here’s how I can help you make change happen:
Deep assessment
Spending time in your organisation to observe and document its processes. It may also involve infrastructure, process overhauls and workshops on culture
Communication strategy work
Developing written assets and supporting documents to turn your organisation into a freelance-friendly beacon
Auditing your current state of play
Reviewing in-house structure, documents and processes to make recommendations needed to improve freelance workforce relations
Educational assets and/or workshops
If you think you have the baseline for a freelance-friendly workplace culture but could do with a tune up in specific areas, this is ideal.
I can work online or visit workplaces in Wollongong, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane and Melbourne on request.*
If you want people to create better work product, be more loyal and feel more attached to your company, you have to build strong culture. It has to be the kind of culture that encourages movement, freedom and has you cheering for change.
Note: Costs for Brisbane, Canberra and Melbourne are higher as they will include travel and accommodation costs.
