When we think of the term Freelancer, most of us think of a low-cost alternative worker. If Tim Ferris did anything in his The 4-hour Workweek book, he certainly legitimized the freelancer as someone that chooses this as a career option. Nowadays, a Freelancer fits a much broader definition to include but no limited…
- Independent Contractors
- Moonlighters
- Diversified Workers
- Temporary Workers
- Freelance business Owners
I might even throw Consultants into that mix if I take a little wider scope. However, you must remember freelancers are not employees. Independent Contractors, Freelancers have a mind of their own. You can choose to leverage it or just have them do the work you want them to do.
When we think of business trends today, we all too often jump to technology and how that space has changed the way we do business. The human element if often left behind. Often thought as old school thought. Freelancers can have a great deal of impact on your business. Think of them as Agile Talent:
Top five reasons why organizations use agile talent (Source: RBL Group Survey):
- Leverage the increased availability of expertise
- Reduce cost
- Avoid adding to permanent headcount
- Increase speed of getting things done
- Challenge organization’s thinking and assumptions with outside ideas
This is a new era for many of us in business. We have supplemented general labor with temporary workers or maybe used different sub-contractors for jobs. However, bringing on knowledge workers, for example, that will enable us to extend our abilities or bid we would not bid without that knowledge is foreign to many of us.
Tomorrow’s Business901 podcast with Lisa Hufford, author of Navigating the Talent Shift: How to Build On-Demand Teams that Drive Innovation, Control Costs, and Get Results, will discuss some of the ins and outs of this type of work. I am going to take this subject a little further in the upcoming weeks on managing and getting the most out of freelancers as I have found this to be an area that is lacking. Also, I will be touching upon the idea of Marketing for Freelancers an area that I have spent quite a bit of time on in recent years.