Every day more and more businesses worldwide are integrating freelancers into their structure to give support to their staff members in hundreds of tasks.

Indeed, a research study conducted by Oxford University revealed that in the year 2017 alone, work delegated to freelancers at the Fortune 500 companies -defined by their global growth- increased by 26%.

In Latin America, we are actually undergoing an amazing growth in freelance work-mode reaching even a 180% annual rate. This means that thousands of organisations are achieving quite an excellent labour synergy when integrating independent professionals into their work-teams.   

The areas with the highest hiring rates are design and multimedia, IT and programming, content and digital marketing. Nevertheless, freelancers can help you in practically every field of industry.  

This is precisely the subject to which we devote today’s article. We will explain why and when you can start taking advantage of independent talent to grow and encourage the productivity of your permanent collaborators at your enterprise.

So let’s begin!

Why integrating freelancers into your organisational structure?

The main advantages of hiring a freelancer to give you support in the course of a project or in some specific task, instead of hiring a permanent employee, are:

• Saving: According to an analysis carried out by Forbes, 57% of the firms turning to independent talent save up to 20% in labour costs.  
• Time: At whatever organisation, the formalities linked with hiring a new permanent employee tends to take quite a time. Hiring a freelancer proves much faster. As an example, if you post your project at Workana today, you will have many good proposals to choose from, and you will be able to start working promptly.

As a matter of fact, another Forbes’ analysis shows that 36% of the enterprises opt for independent talent mostly because of advantages concerning time.

• Flexibility and Adaptability: Freelance platforms such as Workana allow you to hire freelancers with expertise on a wide variety of projects and tasks. By doing this, you will be able to vary hiring options according to your needs.

How to integrate freelancers into your structure? The importance of their understanding your entrepreneurial vision

Finding an ideal freelancer is not easy. Fortunately, at Workana we have several guides about the points you must keep in mind when hiring an autonomous ally. We even address how to hire many professionals at the same time.

Beyond the technical and operative aspects of integrating freelancer in your organisational structure, there is a crucial element to success:

Achieve that they understand your visions. In other words, the big “why” of your enterprise

-A solid entrepreneurial philosophy has short-run and long-run clear objectives. These are capable of motivating staff to work for a goal that is far beyond the mere getting of a wage. Therefore, it encourages them to give their best because they identify with the organisation’s mission.

Align full-time employees with an organisational vision is quite a challenge for most enterprises. Aligning freelancer proves even a harder one. In fact, a human resources firm named Remica points out that:

• Up to 80% o the collaborators in a company state that they “do not consider themselves to be enough motivated nor properly lined up with the organisation’s objectives”.
• This causes a loss in productivity of up to 37%.
• An adequate alignment gives way to an increase in productivity of at least 3%.

Therefore, it is clear how vital it is to find the way in which freelancers who are integrated into your organisation share your vision.

How can freelancers be aligned with your enterprise vision and objectives?

1. A powerful mission

Your organisation’s goals must be expressed perfectly clear but, above all, persuasively. They must be able to arouse genuine interest -beyond economic compensations- in each collaborator you recruit, no matter what his working scheme is.  

Following are 13 examples of enterprise missions whose main feature is their motivating power

2. Personal values consistent with enterprise values

Seek for freelancers who personally share those values your organisation. This begins right from the posting of a good project at Workana. There you specify not only the kind of skills and aptitudes requested, but also the type of profile that better fits the company.

3. Global vision

We refer to each collaborator being aware of how his work helps the rest of the team to meet the organisation’s ends.  

Many times, employees are unmotivated because they don’t find the “what for” in their own obligations. According to Hay’s CEO, Alistair Cox, if employees do not feel part of something more significant, they cannot devote 100% of their effort to some task.

Conveying a global vision implies “encouraging their opinion about corporate image, commitment, promoting a sense of connection and a common objective”.

When should you integrate freelancers in your Enterprise?

Growing with freelancers is something you can do in practically every stage since your organisation will always have chances to improve in one way or another. Nevertheless, there are three particular moments in which they are especially helpful for you:

When you need to cover seasonal requirements

Forbes states that up to 42% of the companies turn to contingent telecommuters to face demand peaks on certain seasonal periods. This makes a lot of sense considering how costly would be to hire permanent staff and then to have to meet severance payments for the exceeding headcount when workload decreases.   

As an example, Amazon hired 120,000 temporary workers during the last Christmas season, since on these dates the number of orders to cover increases drastically.

We know that maybe you don’t need 120,000 additional collaborators, but perhaps a business editor can provide support with seasonal marketing content, or you can turn to a graphic designer to quickly deliver Black Friday banners without adding extra workload to your team.

When the workload is beyond your management possibilities

There are many enterprises or start-ups which hold a permanent headcount. Nevertheless, when they are overloaded, they turn to some reliable freelancers instead of hiring new employees.

For example, if you have five programmers and an additional project comes up in the ongoing month, it will prove more convenient to hire a freelance coder providing support instead of coping with all the procedures of hiring a new one. Moreover, most likely, this independent programmer may work with you again in the future. The advantage is that he will already know how you work at your company.  

Or, for example, you can also recourse to a virtual assistant to help you organise your agenda, e-mails and payments whenever you need to focus all your attention on other issues.  

When you want to try something new

Perhaps the idea of implementing digital marketing or providing customer support has called your attention. But at the same time, you are not entirely convinced that this will work out, and you don’t want to make a substantial investment without being sure that you are on the right path.  

In situations like this, a senior freelancer can help much, both providing consulting services and taking the first steps in the deployment of a project plausible to be scaled later onwards.  

For example, instead of hiring a digital marketing agency, first turn to a freelancer working on this area so that he explains in depth how it works, help you to optimise your web according to SEO criteria and specifying which were the outcomes of the actions undertaken.  

At Workana we want you to start enjoying the benefits of integrating freelancers into your work-scheme. Remember that no matter the kind of business you own, they are an ideal option to recruit the best talent into your rows.

Follow Workana at LinkedIn; daily, we bring you the best content on entrepreneurship.