Small businesses are catching on to the benefits of working with a team of freelancers. According to research, more than half of sole proprietors and businesses with 20 or fewer employers hire freelancers. That figure jumps to two-thirds for businesses with 21-200 employees. With remote work becoming the norm, the whole world is your talent pool.
Get Ready To Hire Freelancers
Before you jump into the process of hiring your international freelance team, it can be useful to square away some administrative tasks. For example, forming a limited liability company for your business protects your personal assets, saves paperwork and has some tax advantages. Regulations vary by state, so it is a good idea to either consult with an attorney or hire a formation service to handle the paperwork for you without the hefty legal fees.
Identify Jobs That Can Be Done Remotely
Fast internet connections, mobile devices and powerful computers have made it possible to do more types of work remotely than ever before. Chances are if you think of something as being an “office job,” it can be done remotely. Examples of these jobs include customer service, payroll, human resources, sales, technical support and data entry.
Pay Freelancers
Once you’ve found the freelancers you want to work with, you need to figure out how to pay them for their work. Paying international freelancers can sometimes be more complicated than paying domestic workers. Some payment platforms are not available or cost-effective in every country and international wire transfers can be expensive. Wire transfer services typically offer reliable, low-fee money transfer options that you can use to pay international workers.
Communicate With Your Team
There are so many ways to communicate with workers in locations around the world that the challenge is more about coordinating the communication than figuring out how to do it. It can help to invest in collaborative software that provides a centralized location for your communication efforts.
If you need to exchange images with graphic designers, web designers or marketing professionals, compressing your JPG files can make them easier to email. Unfortunately, compression can also degrade image quality. Consider using a free tool to quickly convert JPG to PDF files. This tool can turn your image files into PDFs without any loss of image quality. It also allows you to convert multiple JPGs into a single PDF so you can avoid sending multiple emails.
Have a Meet and Greet
One of the downsides of using a workforce that is scattered around the world is that many of your employees will never have the chance to meet each other in person. This can create a sense of isolation and make it hard to build a sense of team. Utilizing video conferencing software to host a virtual meet and greet can help you start building a company culture. Schedule regular meetings and find other fun ways to help your team connect.
Keeping a team of freelancers that you may never see face-to-face happy and productive is a challenge. However, the benefits of building an international team of freelance workers make it a challenge worth overcoming.
