As an established business or fast-growing startup, you might have discovered the many upsides of working with freelance contractors. You can tap into a global pool of talent, and avoid overheads like paid vacation and insurance.
So when you find quality freelancers that provide outstanding services which align with your business – you don’t want to lose them.
Identifying quality freelancers in your talent pool
The notion of identifying “quality” in your freelance talent network is often seen as subjective. But with Worksuite, you can gather concrete metrics around the quantity and quality of work produced by your contractors.
In the Worksuite dashboard, you can easily set up custom filters to generate reports that give you deeper insights into performance across your talent pool.
These reports are highly beneficial for your business, as they can help you quickly pinpoint issues related to things like assignment placements, manager-vendor coordination, and vendor performance.
They can also help you identify top performers in your talent network and develop strategies to maintain and maximize the potential of those people.
Here’s a few examples of key talent quality metrics you can set up for your business:
- Talent with the highest ratings
- Projects with the highest ratings from your freelancers
- Volume of vendors assigned tasks and projects
- Most engaged vendors
- Percentage of vendors that are on multiple assignments vs. only one assignment
- Percentage of assignments cancelled prior to the start date
- Percentage of assignments cancelled prior to the end date
- Percentage of assignments rejected by vendors
- Percentage of vendors that applied via your business portal vs added directly by a manager
- Percentage of vendors that have been assigned a task based on whether they came in through the portal or were assigned by a manager
- Average number of assignments per vendor
- List of talent that hasn’t been assigned any projects in the last 12 months
Using your quality metrics to retain top talent
Having this detailed data at your fingertips is one thing – but actually taking action on it? That’s another matter altogether. How can you turn these concrete metrics into an actionable plan to ensure your best contractors stick around?
Here are some of the creative ways we’ve seen our Worksuite customers grow and maintain a dedicated team of amazing freelance talent:
Organize your quality talent via Groups, Tags, or Ratings
Make it simple to see who the top performers are in your talent network by segmenting them into custom groups that make sense for your business, and enabling your managers and teams to tag and rate your talent based on the type of assignment and standard of work produced.
Send bulk messages regularly to your talent network
Use the above organizational filters to send out personalized, bulk messages to each talent segment that you create. This can help to keep your top talent engaged with your business, and let them know about any upcoming opportunities or news that is relevant to them.
Assign a steady flow of interesting work
Once you’ve run your metrics report and identified your top performers, make sure they’re assigned a steady flow of work they love, so that they won’t think about looking anywhere else.
If your best freelancers get bored, or don’t have enough work, the first thing they’ll do is start searching elsewhere for new projects. They are business owners themselves, so things need to run smoothly!
Regular, enjoyable assignments will stop your top talent getting stressed out about where their next project is coming from, so they can relax and concentrate on providing their best work for your company.
Expand opportunities
Many freelancers are multi-skilled in different areas that could be useful for your business. Ask your top talent if they’d be interested in using their other skills to expand the type of work they do for you – and give them a trial on new types of tasks.
New opportunities and challenges can help to build confidence in your talent, and strengthen the relationship between you and top contractors.
Create specific programs or incentives for your top freelancers
Incentivizing your freelance talent is one of the best ways to get them to stay. Many of our customers run programs that are aimed at the top 20% of their contractors, to ensure they feel appreciated and are rewarded for the excellent work they do.
Give yearly awards
Create engagement categories based on the metrics you’ve been collecting, and plan yearly awards to give out to your top freelance performers.
Adjust pay rates
It’s never a good idea to low-ball your top talent. This will result in rushed, low-quality work – and you run the risk of your best freelancers leaving you for the competition. Freelancers talk to each other, and your company doesn’t want to become known as a “low payer”.
Ensure you’re carrying out regular pay rate reviews to ensure your top vendors are adequately compensated for their time and effort – and to make sure they’re being paid market rates so they’re not tempted to find other work.
Archive non-engaged talent
Clean your talent pool database on a regular basis so you know who’s still interested in working with you. Worksuite gives you an archive capability to remove access for any freelancers who haven’t been engaged with you for over 12 months.
In conclusion
As your company scales and hires dozens (if not hundreds) of freelancers, it can be hard to get a transparent overview of the quality of work being carried out by everyone in your talent pool.
Spreadsheets and emails are time consuming, and don’t provide the detailed metrics you need to help your top contractors thrive and grow in their own freelance businesses.
Worksuite makes it simple for you to set up filters that directly measure the quality and quantity of the work done by everyone in your freelance talent pool – so you can make more strategic decisions about project assignments, workload, and pay rates.
Author,
Aaron Anderson
