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Actions for Successful Remote Freelance Work

Written by: Daryl James

Article Overview: As an online freelance provider, I use technology every day to provide my outsourcing managers with transparency, visibility, and open and honest communication. These three critical areas are the real deliverables with respect to outsourcing, and the most successful freelance providers recognize their value when building long-term outsourcing relationships. Relating to these three outsourcing concerns, there are some relatively simple things that a freelance remote worker can do to help themselves succeed. Here are five actions for successful remote freelance work...

Actions for Successful Remote Freelance Work

As an online freelance provider, I use technology every day to provide my outsourcing managers with transparency, visibility, and open and honest communication. These three critical areas are the real deliverables with respect to outsourcing, and the most successful freelance providers recognize their value when building long-term outsourcing relationships.

Relating to these three outsourcing concerns, there are some relatively simple things that a freelance remote worker can do to help themselves succeed. Here are five actions for successful remote freelance work:

1. Use VoIP. Social disconnection between outsourcing manager and freelance provider is a real problem. Email is great for asynchronous work, and IM is something many freelance remote workers can’t live without, but both methods of communication are cold and impersonal. To truly be integrated into an outsourcing workteam, freelance providers need to hear and be heard. Use Skype or Google Talk, and have a greater voice in the overall outsourcing project.
2. Set your own hours (and keep them). Be consistent in your freelance working hours, and make sure you have at least a few hours of overlap with your outsourcing workteam every day. If you’re working, be connected to your IM account(s) and set your status appropriately. You might also use a webcam to help cement your workteam ‘presence’ in your colleagues’ minds, and your freelance position in the outsourcing company itself. Don’t make outsourcing managers or workteam members have to hunt you down.
3. Eliminate distractions. Working from home can be liberating. However, there are can be advantages to an office environment, most notably, a lack of distractions such as kids, pets, TV, etc. Try to designate one room as your freelance home office. Keep the door closed and the kids/pets out while you’re working. If having background noise such as music or TV helps you get in ‘the zone’ and makes you more productive, use it. Otherwise, eliminate it.
4. Be comfortable. As any worker quickly learns, being uncomfortable does hurt productivity. I’ve always been amazed by how people have no problem dropping $1000+ for the leather seating option on their new car, but balk at spending a few hundred dollars on a good chair from a vendor like Steelcase or Herman Miller. If you spend more time on a daily basis in your office chair than in your car, as I’m pretty sure most people do, then you’re doing yourself a disservice.
5. Care about your freelance craft. If you don’t care about the outsourced project you’re working on or the outsourcing company you’re working for, it becomes apparent pretty fast. Outsourcing companies know that finding reliable remote freelance workers has traditionally been a hard problem. Little things like following up, and being honest and driven show you care, and can pay long-term dividends in your overall outsourcing relationship.

While this list is in no way exhaustive, these tips are sure to provide freelance providers new and old with specific actions that they can take to maintain transparency, visibility, and open and honest communication with their outsourcing managers.

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Article Tags: background noise, colleagues, critical areas, deliverables, disconnection, distractions, email, freelance position, freelance work, google, honest communication, methods of communication, office environment, outsourcing company, outsourcing project, outsourcing relationships, skype, transparency, visibility, working from home



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