Bringing on contract employees is a great way to meet certain needs of your business that may not necessitate hiring a full-time or part-time employee. That being said, it’s vital that you manage them with the same level of care as you would a full-time employee as not doing so can have major consequences for your business. When you’re attempting to manage contract employees or teams, where are you supposed to begin? To help you get started, here are four tools to have that are essential to managing contract employees.
1. Have basic organizational tools on hand that keep their information safe and accessible.
In regard to managing contract employees, the most basic organizational tools are often the ones that are most overlooked. For example, keeping essentials on hand like 1099 envelopes that allow you to seamlessly send your independent contractors their tax information once tax season rolls around is something that your organization may not have thought of yet.
With these tools, it’s just a matter of getting their financial information, sealing it in an envelope that offers self-sealing capabilities and tinted material to protect private information and mailing it to them. Although the tools offered below are necessary as well, thinking about the tools that you need to organize contracts, payment information, and other private details about your contractors are the first steps to being successful when enlisting the help of independent contractors.
2. Look for software solutions that foster collaboration and productivity.
Making the decision to hire contractors gives you access to talent that’ll greatly benefit your organization. The issue? Unless all of your talents are on the same page when it comes to your organization’s goals, you may not see the progress you were expecting. This is why you need a tool like Workboard on your side. Workboard is a software that utilizes a system known as Objectives and Key Results (OKR) to help your organization develop clear goals and actionable, measurable steps to help you achieve them. With integrations for major platforms like Zendesk and Salesforce, Workboard is an excellent solution to help you keep your contractors in sync and on track.
3. Find ways to stay connected with contract employees, and help them stay connected with each other.
Miscommunication can be a major obstacle for businesses, especially when managing a team of independent contractors. Fortunately, keeping communication open is as simple as finding an instant messaging app for your business that allows you to keep your contactors informed, allowing them to reach out to you if they need any help when working on a project, and helping them stay in touch with other team members who they may need to collaborate with makes staying on top of your contractors easier. Whether you’re reaching out to contractors for remote work or for jobs where you work with your hands, great communication systems are vital for every business.
4. Seek out onboarding systems that ensure each of your contract employees have what they need to succeed.
Many businesses may assume that training is non-essential for experienced contract workers. However, every business has different expectations when it comes to their work, which is something that you want to tackle as soon as you bring someone on your team. To ensure that your contractors have everything they need to succeed from the beginning, look for onboarding software that guides them through the process of coming onto your team, what the expectations are for them and their performance, and what they can expect to encounter when they start tackling projects. This strong foundation will make it easier to manage them in moving forward.
Independent contractors can be great for your business, but like any other member of your organization, the level of performance and output you receive from them depends on how well you manage and support them. If you want to get the most out of your contractors, use the four tools above to manage your contract employees more effectively.
