Challenge
To find a technology partner that could help manage a talent pool of 600+ freelancers.
BDG works with a range of contractors, including local, international, full time, and part time freelancers — with individual teams set up in-house to manage them.
Before implementing Worksuite, BDG managed their freelance talent pool with Google documents, spreadsheets, and emails — but with their rapid growth from one website to 13 websites over five years, it was clear that another solution needed to be found to replace these manual processes.
"Using Google forms made us really open to risk due to human error"
As they have new freelancers onboarding all the time, BDG needed a robust, streamlined system to manage contractors who might only ever work on one project — and those who might be assigned five pieces a week.
With varying contracts and scopes of work across their talent pool, it was important that any technology platform they implemented could handle onboarding and compliance seamlessly — and give the BDG teams full transparency into budget spend by site.
BDG learned about Worksuite through an in-house referral, and on doing some preliminary research, they knew that this was the software platform they had been looking for to manage and scale their talent pool.
“When we had our first meeting with the Worksuite team it didn't seem like there was any other competition. They had the best solution, and had worked with companies that were similar to us.” — Eileen Cain, VP of Editorial Operations, BDG
Solution
BDG and Worksuite partnered together on a six-month implementation of the platform across their global teams.
They customized the onboarding flows to ensure compliance and ease of use for both their teams and their different types of contractors.
"Worksuite's support teams are incredible. We hit a couple of bumps in the road, but the whole rollout was pretty good — the team is incredibly responsive and helpful"
Previously, BDG needed to provide new freelancers with lengthy documentation via third party platforms. With Worksuite's customized onboarding workflows, the process is now much easier for new contractors. They can onboard directly in the platform, and they no longer have to deal with lengthy back and forth emails or DocuSign.
"Worksuite has all the information in the workstream portal for onboarding — a couple of clicks and someone's in — which is great"
BDG found immediate benefits in having greater accountability measures in place with the Worksuite platform. Assignments, invoices, and payments can now be tracked to see the status of every budget in real time. If something goes wrong or someone gets stuck, the BDG teams can see immediately if there's been a breakdown, and exactly where they are in the process.
Result
Worksuite is now BDG's talent pool hub for both domestic and international freelance contractors.
Having previously used Google documents and sheets to manage their talent projects, moving to Worksuite proved to be much more efficient for end-to-end budget management.
"It's really helpful having everything in one tool so things can be easily tracked."
Using Worksuite has reduced the amount of emails around assignments and onboarding for BDG, and it has given teams and freelancers clarity into where projects are at, and what the next steps are at any given time. It has also given BDG's teams complete transparency into budget tracking and spending for every site.
“From the transparency and visibility side, it's incredibly helpful. I can look top down at everybody's budget at once and see where money is being spent.” — Eileen Cain, VP of Editorial Operations, BDG
BDG is finding that scaling their freelance network has become easier and better since implementing Worksuite. In the future, BDG plans to tailor more customized onboarding flows and contracts for different segments of their talent pool, plus integrate Worksuite Pay into their platform.
BDG is a leading digital media publisher that has over 110 million readers every month across 13 media brands — including Bustle, Elite Daily, and Nylon.
