Working with freelancers can be a game-changer for your business! You get to access a global talent pool and bring in specialized expertise that may not be available in-house. But managing a remote team of freelancers isn’t always easy. Communication can be a bit trickier, and progress tracking can be challenging. Sometimes it can be hard to keep everyone on the same page. Luckily, there are some amazing tools out there that can make collaborating with freelancers easy and quick. In this blog post, we’ll show you some useful tools that will help you manage contractors effectively, no matter where they’re.
Communication tools
Good communication in a company is a key part of efficient work. Without it, mistakes will accumulate, and employees won’t use their working time efficiently. And even lead to lowered productivity. When you hire freelancers, you need to communicate often to build a trustworthy relationship and provide information on how exactly the finished project should look. There are some tools that allow quick and easy communication inside the company while enabling whole departments to collaborate and share insight. Many of them can be used on mobile devices and personal computers!
Slack is a helpful tool for fast communication. The price for the slack business is €11.75 monthly. You can create rooms for each department or role. Slack is especially useful for quick meetings and information sharing. You can talk in group channels or directly with the person. Moreover, the history of conversations is saved, and you can pin helpful information for future reference. It’s a fast and friendly application used by many people, including contractors.
Teams is a lightning-fast communication tool that offers chat and discussion lists. The price of Teams ranges from $4 to $12.5 per month, and it provides a powerful cloud storage capacity of up to 1 terabyte. With it, you can have online meetings and schedule them using Outlook. You can also use screen-sharing during the video call. Additionally, the built-in whiteboard feature lets you collaborate with your team during meetings. Microsoft has designed Teams to integrate with nearly all Office 365 applications, including OneDrive, Outlook, and SharePoint.
Zoom specializes in video conferencing and offers several extra features during video calls. The professional version costs €139.9 per user annually. For instance, you can grant remote control to another user, which may be helpful when working with an IT specialist who can repair your computer remotely without any step-by-step instructions. Zoom is a streamlined tool that enables you to join meetings without creating an account. So if you need to talk with contractors, you can quickly have the meeting with Zoo. Also, despite slower internet connections, the video quality remains at 1080p, and it offers up to 10 gigabytes of data.
Onboarding tools
The onboarding process is the process of introducing a new employee to a company. The benefits of onboarding are lower HR costs because the training can be recorded or automated. With the proper training, new teammates know everything when they start work. Using online tools for training allows a company to save money when hiring remote employees. Studies have shown that onboarding increases the chances that the worker will stay in that organization instead of changing the job.
Onboarding is also important for training independent contractors and freelancers. It’s crucial that they understand how to use the company’s software and avoid specific project mistakes. When hiring contractors, providing them with all the necessary details about the job is important to minimize the risk of miscommunication.
Worksuite is a helpful tool for the hiring process. Depending on the tool’s complexity, the price is between $500 and $1000 per month plus extra per additional group of users. It allows easy management of independent contractors and applicants. The tool helps to manage resources in real-time using the worker’s availability. This tool can be customized to suit the needs of the organization.
Personio platform can fulfill several different tasks, including recruiting for applicant tracking, posting bundles, and developing for performance. Personio will be helpful when you want to hire contractors and app developers to work on making it easier for the users. Even permanent employees should use a tool like Personio for annual training and increase their competencies.
Eloomi is useful in formal internal training and online courses. Eloomi will certainly reduce administrative costs and save time for the human resources department to use their time more effectively. Companies could pass the organization’s knowledge on an easy-to-access platform. With Eloomi, you can upskill and reskill your employees with mandatory or optional training, improve soft skills, and get clear product updates.
Tools to share material
Sharing materials is one of the essential processes in many companies, especially if they have a remote team. It is important to send critical data early to build a better relationship with independent contractors. The tools below enable us to share and organize materials. They can be used by full-time employees, freelancers, and contractors.
Google Suite includes docs, forms, spreadsheets, presentations, sites, calendars, Hangouts, and Google+. The prices for the business plan per user are $12 a month. Bringing external hard drives and flash drives is troublesome. Google Drive solves that problem since it can run on several devices, such as Windows, Mac, Android, and IOS. With Google Drive, you can access your files in the cloud when logged in to Gmail. The best thing about Google Drive is that it is part of the Google system. So you have everything in one place. Also, Google Drive scans files and ensures they are free from viruses. But only for files smaller than 100MB. It’s undoubtedly an excellent tool for any company. Various tools make the higher costs of Google Drive more understandable.
Similar to iCloud and Google Drive, OneDrive serves many functions. The cost of OneDrive is $5.00 a month per user. It backs up devices for Windows 10 and 11 users, including images and favorites pages. It also syncs Microsoft 365 documents and enables co-authoring. The file size per user is 15GB. The advantages of OneDrive are strong online photo presentation and management, powerful file-sharing, and collaborative editing.
Project management tools
Managing projects can be a challenging job. If the project involves too many members, it can become impossible for one person to manage work efficiently. The process can be very time-consuming. The tools for managing contractors allow for the automation of specific tasks and give a better view of the project lifecycle. With those tools, you reduce the risk of a potential problem going unnoticed and delaying the whole project. Additionally, those tools can also be used for managing freelance projects.
Smartsheet includes many work products for project management, which integrate well with the app. The price starts with a pro version, with $7 per user billed monthly. Key features of those products are:
-
Bridge for building intelligent workflows
-
Content collaboration for managing and reviewing content production
-
WorkApps for streamlining work
-
Dynamic View for secure request management
-
Pivot App to summarize and analyze datasets
-
DataMesh to prevent duplicated data entry between large sheets
-
Resource management for project tracking, budgeting, and resource allocation
This tool allows you to track project completion by gathering valuable data. Teamwork is cost-effective for the applications it contains. It’s €17.99 per month per user yearly. You can quickly track freelancers’ work time, allocate resources, and run burndown reports. All those functions allow you to concentrate better on the manager job and spend less time on performance reviews. Teamwork has an amiable design. It’s easy to notice updates on different projects. You can monitor the project status using other graphs to easier control the project more.
Confluence is a comprehensive project management tool that enables teams to brainstorm ideas using a digital whiteboard and take notes. The tool allows users to organize content and work into page trees, making it easier to find tasks and responsible team members. Confluence is available in both cloud and data center versions. It allows individuals to access reports, meeting notes, drafts, and task lists. While also providing live updates to documents when someone makes some changes. This tool provides a centralized platform for everyone working on a project and offers multiple collaboration tools to enhance productivity.
Monday.com is a powerful tool that can simplify the process of managing contractors for an organization. With this tool, teams can effectively manage the tasks needed to complete a project, presented in an easy-to-read spreadsheet format. Monday.com also allows for the automation of certain processes, such as sending periodic duplicate emails or documents, which can save time and minimize repetitive tasks. Additionally, this tool allows you to automate processes based on time or other factors, which can be useful when adding new employees.
With those tools, working with freelancers can be easy. Online communicators save discussions in one place, allowing quick review in case you need to check some information. Project management tools will come in handy when managing multiple contractors. We hope this guide has provided you with valuable insights into the top tools available for managing freelancers!
![Client onboarding checklist. Guide for freelancers [download PDF]](https://useme.com/en/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/client-onboarding-checklist-guide-for-freelancers-download-pdf-400x250.jpg)