Hello! This week I have a guest post from Tina Martin with Ideaspired. Tina stays busy as a life coach and works hard to help herself and her clients achieve a healthy work-life balance. She started Ideaspired as a side project to reach as many people as possible, and encourage them to put their dreams first.
The transition from remote freelancer to remote business owner is an exciting one, but it also means taking on a whole new set of skills. When you’re a one-person team, you only have to figure out how to make remote work and time management work for you. Once you plan to expand your business and bring on other people, however, things get a lot more complicated.
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Working with Freelancers
When it comes to hiring remote workers, you can go for the freelance/contract route or you can hire traditional employees. Both options have their pros and cons, and it’s perfectly conceivable that your team will be made up of both types.
In the beginning, for example, you might lean toward contract employees. This is a much simpler arrangement for you as a business owner and gives you the freedom to easily end relationships that aren’t working. It’s also a great way to tackle short projects that don’t necessarily need a long-term employee. For example, if you want to make a marketing video to send to potential investors, you can hire a freelancer to put the video together. Or if you want quality images for your website, you can hire aPhotoshop services professional. Unless these services are going to be part of your long-term plan, this makes better sense than hiring a dedicated employee for the sake of one project. When hiring freelancers, take time to compare rates, experience, and portfolios to make sure you’re finding the right fit for your needs.
Hiring Traditional Employees To Your Remote Team
Once you’re more fully established, you’ll likely want to think about hiring a dedicated staff. As a small business, it’s important to hire people with experience working remotely. The good news is, nearly everyone who worked an office job over the last year has had a chance to see if remote work is right for them. The glut of interested candidates is a pro and a con since you’ll have plenty of people to choose from — and more than you may be prepared to sort through.
Beyond remote experience, you’ll want to focus on filling in yourbusiness’s skill gaps. This means looking honestly at your own abilities, experience, and interests and identifying weaknesses. Focus on people who bring those skills to the table. You should also make sure you can communicate and connect with potential employees. Personal connection matters, especially for a small remote team. Make sure they’re someone you’reinterested in talking to and working with, in addition to having the right skills and experience.
Collaboration and Productivity Tools
It’s not enough for your employees to know how to work remotely: you must also know how tomanage them remotely. Fortunately, there are tons of collaboration and project management tools out there that make remote work far easier for business owners and employees alike. Communication should be the first hurdle you tackle. Programs like Slack allow you to easily group and direct message employees, as well as make channels for different teams and topics.Video chat software is also a must-have: Remote meetings allow you to communicate clearly with your team and avoid some of the miscommunications that can happen over text.
You should also use some form of project management software. Take a look at the options on the market and consider trying out a few to see which ones work best for you. Use yourcurrent workflow as a jumping-off point, but don’t be afraid to tweak it to suit the software during your trial — you might just discover a better way to tackle your process entirely.
Remote businesses open themselves up to employees all over the world and create an environment where workers can do their jobs in the space that’s best for them. With the right group of people, this can lead to building a team that makes amazing things happen.
Want to find the experienced remote employees you need? Sign up to Remote Workers as a company and get started today.
Be sure to follow Tina Martin at Ideaspired for more career advice!