Verónica Gil Arroyo is a Business Partner at Workana and passionate about finding solutions and opportunities. In this article, you’ll learn more about why it’s important to keep an eye out for new possibilities so you can identify what to do when it’s time to go beyond the obvious and keep growing.   

Recently, it was time to set up a follow-up meeting with an existing client.

Even though I had written them several times to get feedback on their projects that they had completed, I had some trouble getting a hold of them. After all, these have been tumultuous times. We understand, and part of our job is to stay up to date with what’s going on. Our relationships have never been based solely on connecting freelancers with companies but offering full assessments, and always being ready to meet new challenges.

The time came, and finally, we set up a time to go over a few ways to streamline and optimize.

Their vision is innovative and disruptive. Their business is an innovative streaming service for a very specific niche. In order to make it possible, we put together a team of ten 100% remote IT freelancers from Workana. Imagine working directly with the CTO of a company for such an ambitious project, a CTO who’s still surprised by the results achieved such in a short amount of time and with how quickly the team was put together and set in motion.

What does identifying improvement opportunities entail? 

A lot of times, we’re so focused on a company’s core operations that we don’t see that we can optimize resources or make processes agile in less obvious ways.

Going back to our earlier case, this is someone who’s very involved with the culture of the business that they’re creating, and they dedicate a lot of time to participating in the recruiting process, interviews, onboarding, and managing support on the platform. But we know that their time is very limited, their vision is valuable, and there are so many other needs that require their full attention.

My suggestion: what would happen if Workana took care of providing support by helping coordinate the recruiting process? Their manager could complete this operational task, simplify the process, and only get them involved when it was time to make a decision. And that’s how we proceeded. Step 1: Introduce the account manager to get started. 

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Their turnover rate is 0% which speaks very well of their culture, and I discovered that they had genuine interest in learning a bit more about a freelancer’s needs, interests, motivations, and aspirations and finding common ground. They were really looking to establish a connection with the team. 

Like many of our clients, the cultural match was synonymous with success within his company. Curiously, despite being an essential aspect, many companies take a while to arrive at the idea of creating an environment of Human Capital. Notice that I say environment and not area because a rigid and traditional structure isn’t always necessary; a lot of times with good ideas and the help of the right professionals, a company can make great strides with outstanding results.

My client was a one man show, trying to do everything: strategic management, operations management, business intelligence, creating a company culture, and much more. 

Can a freelancer meet a Startup’s Human Capital needs?

Not only can they meet a startup’s human capital needs, we recommend hiring freelancers because there’s no need to postpone investing in taking care of and monitoring teams. They tend to think in terms of a discipline that comes into effect during the company’s advanced stages, but why?

If the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us anything, it’s the importance of focusing on people, and a professional with these tools can make all the difference when it’s time to face uncertainty, provide psychologically reassuring conditions, and monitor the implementation of disruptive changes within the company. 

The benefits of adding a human capital freelancer to your team are:  

• Developing an onboarding process for incoming new resources.
• Participating in the recruiting process and validating aspects of emotional intelligence.
• Organizing weekly meetings with each team
• Monitoring and providing feedback on the freelancer’s general performance during the year.
• Create plans of action for development and incentives
• If you’re also incorporating agile HR tools, they can act as an agility facilitator, and determine both qualitative and quantitative needs, observe trends, and propose improvements in the form of current work.

When we identify what the needs are according to the company’s intentions, desires become solutions. A lot of times companies have opportunities that are either hidden or hard to see, like in the case of my client who was so focused on technology development that although they had the best intuition about how to organize teams, they never stopped to consider the possibility of hiring a freelancer to help work on those aspects that were so present in the company values that they were creating. 

We often find hidden desires during our valuable conversations with clients. We’re obsessed with helping them fulfill their desires with the best results.

Keep these points in mind:

• The important role that open, continuous, and two-way communication with the Workana consultant plays. 
• Continuously looking for visible opportunities and making a creative effort to identify invisible but high-impact opportunities.
• Exploring new opportunities and being open to adding freelancers in less traditional areas.

What are you waiting for? Set up a meeting today and start discovering your opportunities.

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