11. Better Ways to Manage & Communicate with Your Freelancers

The Freelance Factor: Business Growth Strategies

You can find more resources and articles from Rachel at www.copperhiveconsulting.com.

Rachel and her team at Copper Hive Consulting offer consulting packages and coaching to churches and nonprofits with a focus on operational strategy and structure, including marketing. She also has an expansive network of freelancers who specifically prefer serving nonprofits and with whom she shares contract position opportunities. Schedule a free discovery call with Rachel to find the right coach or to share your job opportunities with the freelance network.

Resources

Getting Things Done

Leading the Unleadable

Show Sponsor

HR Ministry Solutions

HR Ministry Solutions is a faith based 501c3 organization that was launched with the mission of helping churches be as passionate about protecting and providing for their staff as they are for the people they are reaching. Tiffany Henning is the founder and owner. I’ve known Tiffany for over a decade and we worked together for much of that time, so I can vouch for her expertise and the service she provides. I would never recommend a company that I haven’t used or would integrate into my own business. It’s important to me that you find resources that will offer solutions to your challenges, not complicate them further.

Since founding HR Ministry Solutions, Tiffany and her team of HR Pros have helped many ministries with HR compliance, labor law, and staff issues. They continue to expand their reach across the US with services and resources including workshops, conferences, webinars, and online learning modules for Church HR People and Ministry Managers.

You can find Tiffany at hrministrysolutions.com or pop into the show notes for an easy link. Please do not let yourself end up on the wrong side HR law and compliance.

Content

Most of what I have been covering in season 1 of this podcast is about foundations of processes and systems to help you become more efficient in your day-to-day operations as well as setting the tone for long-term strategy. Although I primarily work with nonprofits as a consultant and coach, these principles are applicable to every industry and I have thoroughly enjoyed being able to serve entrepreneurs as they scale and small businesses that are working to increase their efficiency.

Just a few episodes back I covered workflows, which is crucial to adding people to your team as employees or freelancers. I’ve also talked about project management basics and how to set up a few operational systems. You can go back and catch those. Most episodes this season are intentionally under 20 minutes because I try to be very direct and to the point about these topics. Plus, if I’m not interviewing someone like I do on my other podcast, Pieces of Grit-interviews with women about that topic, I don’t want you to have to listen to me drone on and on.

The episodes I just mentioned will help you get ready for what we are covering today. If you start hiring employees and freelancers without frameworks in place for systems and processes your communication with these hires will be incredibly challenged. So let’s talk about how to communicate with freelancers specifically.

Your Freelancer is an Expert

When you find a freelancer for a specific project or function, such as accounting, writing emails, managing your calendar, posting on social media, or whatever, keep in mind that they are experts at the thing they are offering to do for you. They are EFFICIENT and can accomplish a lot in a short amount of time versus you trying to do that thing and getting distracted by phone calls, emails, your spouse or kids running into the room, etc.

There are two approaches when you bring in a freelancer based on their expertise. If you know exactly what you’re looking for, be ready to deliver instructions, expected deadlines, any related resources such as login info, graphics, etc. They will ask you the questions they need, but with detailed guidance they will be able to get up and running easily and quickly with specific instructions. The other side of the coin is if you aren’t sure what you need and you are looking to your freelancer to offer guidance.

A great example is a client I had whose email list had more than 8000 names but they weren’t doing anything with this list on a consistent basis. There were names that had been inactive for over a year. When you have names clogging up an email list that are inactive it impacts your open rate and potentially the way email servers can view your emails as spam if you get a low open rate. So we definitely started with cleaning up obsolete emails.

Then we looked at the current segmentation and determined how to best categorize the contacts. And after we had done both of these, I helped devise a communication calendar involving consistent emails as well as special campaigns. This client needed a lot of help planning next steps so the communication was more dependent on me as the freelancer than her as the business owner.

Establish Preferences & Expectations

As soon as you commit to a contract with your freelancer, let them know how you prefer to communicate. I recommend using a platform such as Slack or another Work Management System such as Basecamp or Asana. Emails and texts can pile up and get confusing or lost in the shuffle. Using Slack or something similar keeps all communication in one place. If you are using a platform such as Upwork, there are native chat rooms that also have built in video and phone call options. These are great features that make not only finding a freelancer simple, but maintaining safe and secure communication.

Talk about your hours or response expectations. When working with someone who isn’t your employee they have other clients or jobs and have to juggle multiple channels of communication. Be up front with your requests to avoid frustration and confusion. You may not be in the same time zone, so consider when you will schedule meetings. Do you have specific hours you need your freelancer to be available? That should be communicated prior to committing to a contract to ensure you get what you need from the relationship.

When using communication channels such as Slack you should understand what an acceptable response time should be. If you are a last-minute person this could be a great opportunity to have your freelancer meet with you regularly to ask you questions and plan ahead, saving both of you pain as you try to get work done. Depending on the time of the day, do you expect a same-day response or are you okay with a 24-hour turnaround time?

None of these are bad, it’s just really helpful to communicate these expectations up front and create a great experience from day 1.

When Things Aren’t Going Well

Occasionally you may not feel that you and your freelancer are on the same page. Before jumping ship, here are a few things to try. With a freelancer you jump into the relationship and start going a hundred miles an hour right off the bat. I know you want to get your money’s worth and you want your freelancer to be a mind reader. We all wish that ALL the people we worked with were mind readers, right?

Here are a few steps I walk myself through when working with a freelancer and feeling like something is amiss.

1. Review MY communication first. There is a really good chance I was crystal clear in my own mind, but that it actually came out like a jumbled up mess and they are doing what I said (not what I thought I said).
2. Review parameters of the contract or initial agreement. It’s easy to stretch things a little and not be aligned with what the freelancer agreed to do for you. It doesn’t mean that it can’t be amended, but what if you are asking them to do something they can’t or don’t want to do that wasn’t there at the beginning.
3. Also, review past communication. I have found that answers I’m looking for have already been given to me and in my typical 80% attention capacity it is my fault for overlooking it.
4. Schedule a phone or video call asap. Text communication is great and I recommend having as much in writing as possible. But it’s also cumbersome and not always thorough. You know this - you’re a leader or you work with clients and you are fully aware of the mishaps coming from email only or the missed cues from a lack of intonation and other helpful communication elements. A five minute phone call can clarify what a dozen emails might only make worse.
5. Stop assuming that your freelancer works the same way you do. If you don’t ask your freelancer for a daily update on progress, I promise they will not read your mind. If you want bullet points instead of three paragraphs, tell them. Or vice versa. If you prefer a graph summary instead of raw data from the results you’re expecting, clarify this.

A few other areas we weren’t able to get to today are filing systems - where do you keep assets you can share and where do you expect assets to be delivered. Payment type and frequency - unless you are using a platform like Upwork, have you communicated what you offer and what needs to appear on invoices you receive? A lot of this could be included in a simple contract so that you have it on a single document and don’t have to remember this with every freelancer you employ.

I’m a firm believer that contractors, consultants, coaches and freelancers are an asset to your organization and are one of the most financially responsible ways to operate small to medium nonprofits as well as startup businesses and entrepreneurs. You can have a great experience working with project-based freelancers when you walk into the relationship fully aware.

Through Copper Hive I work with nonprofits and small businesses to establish the framework and path to grow your community, scale your business and focus on what you are best at while letting experts support you.

I would love to meet with you this season and strengthen your operations. Visit copperhiveconsulting.com to explore packages and get in touch with me.

If you got anything helpful out of today’s show, would you take two seconds, screenshot this episode and share on social media? I love getting to share this information with you and help you build a stronger church or nonprofit! If you feel like saying thank you, you can do that by leaving a review. Just scroll down to the bottom of your app or screen and drop a few thoughts.

That’s our show for today! Be kind to the people around you and always let them know how much you appreciate them.