The Harvard Business Review's 7 Tips for Managing Freelancers and Contractors provides advice on how managers can successfully navigate their relationship with contingent workers.
Talent shortages and the shift to hiring more contingent workers means companies are becoming more reliant on contingent talent - even for core and/or strategic jobs.
This means freelancers are often just as valuable as full-time staffers. Because of this, attraction and retention of highly skilled independent workers is becoming increasingly important.
Doing a good job managing independents goes a long way to ensuring your firm will be a "client of choice" for this important source of talent.
The article covers seven tips, which are:
- Understand what they want
- Set expectations
- Build the relationship
- Make them feel part of the team
- Don’t micromanage
- Give feedback
- Pay them well
I'm quoted in the article and it mentions soon to be published research we've done with MBO Partners on the attributes independent consultants, freelancers and contractors look for in hiring organizations.
We'll post on this research in the coming months.
Also at HBR is an article on a related topic - How to Get Feedback as a Freelancer. This is a crucial part of being an independent worker, but can be hard to do.
The article has my byline and I've been getting lots of compliments on my writing. The reality is the editors at HBR did most of the work on this.
Yogi Berra once said "I really didn't say everything I said." I now get to say "I really didn't write everything I wrote."
Comments