---

Guest post by: Daryl James Become an Author

Tweet

---

---

Most outsourcing assignments start small--you hire a freelance provider to complete a specific project. Then, when the provider proves they can be relied upon, you start giving them more hours and increasingly vital outsourcing tasks. Soon you may find your remote freelance provider fully integrated with your in-house staff, changing the relationship between outsourcing buyer and freelance provider.

We hire freelance providers to work with our in-house staff, and, on some projects, one type of worker is virtually indistinguishable from the other. Add to the mix the workplace flexibility that allows traditional employees to telecommute rather than reporting to the office each day, and you've got a workteam requiring an entirely new set of management skills. Here's what we've learned (on the job) when it comes to integrating outsourcing and in-house workteams.

When you hire a freelance provider for a particular outsourcing project, you may not care when they do the work as long as the work diary and memos look good, and the product is delivered on time. However, as you need more real-time collaboration, you may have to reach an agreement whereby the freelance provider is available during some or all of your business hours.

When this happens, the outsourcing buyer must get answers to a few questions: How will the freelance team member be available? Is IM enough? Do they need to have a Skype account? A webcam? When they're "out-of-the-office", will they leave an away message telling you what time they'll be back to working on your outsourcing project? Will your in-house staffers do the same?

You trust your freelance provider to work around their daily life. Maybe they don't log on until after midnight, or frequently suspend sessions to handle family needs. However, once they've agreed to be available at set times, you have as much right to make sure they'll have a distraction-free outsourcing work environment as you do for the "in-house" telecommuter opting for a home office instead of a cubicle. Flexible freelance professionals are masters of clever workarounds, but as the workteam becomes more interdependent, everyone needs to understand that outsourcing expectations evolve.

Of course, you'll continue to manage your freelance provider using outsourcing tools (such as those found over at oDesk), but did you ever consider having your in-house staff logged into these tools as well? Getting all the staff for various projects onto one workteam management platform so that everyone can see who's available and when helps to consolidate and improve management functions.

Integrating your remote freelance providers into the company's daily outsourcing workflow can seem like a daunting task, but by thinking each challenge through, we've found that it's easier than you'd expect for remote outsourcing and in-house team members to become close colleagues.

Related Articles

  Are you Freelance Ready?
  Get More Done with On-Call Help
  Small Business Success: Virtual Teams
  Make Money as a Freelance Customer Support Representative
  How to Make Better Outsourcing Decisions
  Top 5 Qualities in an Outsourcing Company
  Why You Should Include Open Source Work in Your Portfolio
  Phrases Not to Use for Finding Work at Home Jobs
  How to Conduct Effective Outsourcing Interviews
  No Trust, No Team: Building Trust in a Virtual Setting
  Virtual Teams: Success For Small Business
  Effective contract solutions
  Virtual Collaboration is Not For Everyone: The Characteristics of Top Performing Virtual Leaders and Team Members
  10 tips for an Eye-Catching Freelance Profile
  Five Best Work from Home Jobs for Moms
  How to Stay Connected in a Virtual Team
  Building and Organizing a Virtual Team - Strategies that Work
  Ideas For The Best Legitimate Online Home Business
  10 Ways for Freelance Providers to Give Themselves a Raise
  7 Steps to Improve Your Virtual Leadership and Virtual Team Effectiveness

Related Forum Posts

Social media
Re: Anyone Uses Elance.com? Guru.com? Rentacoder.com?
Re: Which is the best for beginners?
Re: Traditonal Demographics Do NOT Work with Generation V
Re: FILL IN THE BLANK: One thing I did to grow my business today

Share this article. Fund someone's dream.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

How to develop a learning organization?

You Can Have It All....Just Not All At Once!

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.