How Worksuite helped Jack Morton slash hours of time a week off their freelance onboarding & management processes

Jack Morton was looking for an alternative solution to their internal freelance management system, which involved both Google Sheets and an existing platform which was lacking the functionality the company needed to grow.

They needed a software solution that would let them organize and communicate smoothly with their contractors, plus enable them to standardize their onboarding processes. 

Their existing platform and disjointed tools lacked a portfolio view and advanced search capabilities – both of which were becoming increasingly important as their talent pool expanded.

The old process involved juggling various documents and platforms, leading to inefficiencies and a lack of cohesion. Different Jack Morton offices utilized separate programs and platforms (Google Sheets in one, Monday.com in another, deal memos in scattered Word docs…), resulting in messy communication and inconsistent workflows. Managing freelancer onboarding and document tracking was manual and time-consuming, with crucial documents scattered across different locations.

“A lot of different documents, a lot of different file folders. Having to do all of those things in addition to tracking down the word documents of the deal memos and then making sure that we’re getting the PDFs saved in one spot and then managing the insurance documents separately…”

As long-time partners with Atrium, Jack Morton asked the Atrium team if they had any recommendations for a software solution that could handle all their freelancer management requirements going forward–and this led to them discovering Worksuite.

“We were looking for something standalone, and that’s something that Worksuite provided. We started talking to their team, and we decided – let’s give this a shot. In our estimation of the spend that we do on freelance – we just did quick math and figured out that it would be a huge saving for us.”

Jack Morton was managing up to 300 freelancers with spreadsheets, which was becoming time consuming in terms of onboarding and assigning the right people to the right projects. 

While they were able to send out regular communications to their talent pool, there was no real-time updating of who was available to work, and who wasn’t. 

“I got bounced emails all the time. And I had people telling me that they’ve been in a full-time job for three years now. It was really a mess.”

Worksuite and Jack Morton worked together to bring their 600+ existing freelancers into the new platform. 

“We built the initial onboarding process and work streams with Worksuite – but in the process they kind of taught us how to do our own. So we can add this question and that question to the onboarding flow, and it literally walks you through things. It’s idiot proof!”

The response from their freelance network to using the Worksuite system, and being able to manage their own onboarding and personal profiles has been overwhelmingly positive. 

Each freelancer can build their profile the way they want to in the Worksuite platform. It’s up to every individual to create a profile that’s as robust as they need it to be, whether it’s just entering their desired rates, contact information, and tax details – or whether they want to add elements such as a detailed portfolio of their previous work.

Once freelancers are onboarded, the system enables the Jack Morton team to easily search through segmented pools of both vetted freelancers and new applicants as they are assigning upcoming projects.

When there is downtime, the resource managers are able to be proactive about searching the applicant pool and inviting contractors to go through their vetting process.

The Worksuite platform has been so successful for the USA branch of Jack Morton that they’re considering rolling it out globally across their organization and bringing on more agents.

“We started to do the iterations of Worksuite to make it more customized to us. The big bonus was the branding. Everything coming from us now has our voice and our branding on it. It feels very custom and very specific to our freelancers. Which led us to imagining – what else is possible?”

“We saw results on day one. Our onboarding time is faster, it’s more efficient. It forced us to rethink how we want to workflow people to make it a better experience for them, and to make it faster and easier for us”

Jack Morton ceased all other onboarding processes once Worksuite was implemented. With the automatic platform prompts, onboarding time has been dramatically shortened, and communication with freelancers has improved exponentially. 

It is now much faster for the Jack Morton team to find out who is interested and available for upcoming projects, while removing the frustration of back-and-forward emails and unnecessary paperwork.

“That cut off probably eight hours of sourcing and calling and reaching out to people – huge time savings and money savings.”

In addition, collaboration and communication has improved between Jack Morton’s freelance relationship management teams. They are able to see which freelancers have been assigned to previous projects, and view the notes about each individual from the managers in charge of those particular jobs.

This makes it simple to share talent across the company, and choose the absolute best fit for every upcoming opportunity.

“We’re seeing greater coordination and collaboration in our resource managers across the network. And we have producers that are starting to get really curious. They’re going to be joining this platform.”

Compliance issues had previously been a concern for Jack Morton’s freelance managers and accounts payable teams. Between the time delays in onboarding and assigning freelancers, and the time constraints of some projects, it was often a fine line for the company to keep compliant.

With Worksuite – the rapid onboarding, smooth workflows, and the ability for freelancers to upload their necessary details directly onto the platform has meant that the company no longer has to worry about any potential compliance issues.

“It’s a centralized platform for freelancers that really professionalizes our system in such a beautiful way.”

Being able to source and re-hire smoothly within their own vetted freelancer network has also helped Jack Morton offer more work to their talent pool. This has created deeper relationships with their freelancers, who appreciate the opportunities for ongoing projects.

“It’s good for the freelancers. We’re allowing them to piece together a full-time living, with as much work as they want across the Jack Morton network. They love working with us, and we love working with them. It has been transformational for our company.”

“Because we have the platform that we have with Worksuite, we can engage, onboard, sign deal memos, review insurance – all in one place. We have built a custom workflow that works for our onboarding and management system, and it does all of that – collects their tax information, gets their banking details, as well as reviewing, tracking and storing our insurance documents, which is another important part of our business – all of that happens right in Worksuite.”

Worksuite also allows Jack Morton to send group messages out to potential candidates in their freelance network. These messages are personalized for each freelancer, and this system saves the company hours of time every week trying to manually source and onboard the ideal people for each new contract.

In addition to time savings, Jack Morton now has full transparency into the project history and availability of every freelancer in their network, which means they can offer more work to the right people and potentially reduce their hiring costs at the same time. 

“If we just do math in a single office, we can have as many as eight to 12 freelancers being onboarded in a week. Each one of those would normally require eight hours of sourcing and messaging – so that’s like 80 hours that nobody could do in a week. There is a cost saving because if we can offer [a freelancer] six months of solid work, we might get a better rate.”

From the first point of contact through to today, Jack Morton has been working together with Worksuite to build the perfect platform for their freelance management needs as they grow. 

With a dedicated account manager, and rapid communication with the Worksuite team via Slack, Jack Morton knows they are always supported at every step.

Jack Morton’s Production Service Director, Mandy Johnson shares final words of wisdom:

“Work with Worksuite.”

“You guys have a phenomenal system that can be really tailored to individual needs. The fact that we were able to build out our workflow for exactly the steps that we wanted… and then build in a couple of new custom steps that you guys helped walk us through… it is an entirely wonderful system to be able to manage at scale, and not have to be tracking down the documents left and right and up and down. That really is something that has helped us organize our little black book and utilize it more effectively.”