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Hiring a freelancer to whom you can outsource some of your business processes offers a number of advantages. These include freeing up some of your capital, lowering overheads, and acquiring talent and expertise that would otherwise be unavailable in your location. To make the most of the many advantages of outsourcing, however, you’ll need tools to help you manage your remote workers.
Here are five tools to consider when hiring freelancers for remote work.
1. Slack
This tool gets first to mention on this list for two reasons. First is that it is one of the most popular communication tools for remote teams all over the world. The second reason is that its popularity largely stems from its various features that let you manage freelancers more efficiently. Apart from tools that make it easier for your remote workforce to collaborate, Slack can also integrate with other remote team management solutions, including Trello, which is also on this list.
2. Zoom
Having regular and clear lines of communication is key in keeping freelancers and remote teams in the loop, as well as keep tabs on their progress. Zoom is the next best thing to having a face-to-face meeting with your remote team. As a video conferencing tool, you can schedule meetings to brainstorm on a project using its whiteboard and slideshow presentation features. This lightweight tool does not take up much computing power, allowing your freelancers to join meetings with a desktop PC, laptop, or mobile device.
3. Toggl
Time management and time tracking are some of the more challenging aspects of collaborative projects with freelancers. Toggl is an intuitive and easy to use tool that your remote workforce can use to track the time that they spend working on their assigned tasks. Toggl lets you keep track of their progress in relation to the time they spend working on a task. This tool also helps your freelancers improve their time management skills.
4. Trello
There is a host of project management software that lets you prioritize and assign tasks, allow teams to collaborate on a single project, and track the progress and contributions of your freelancers. What sets Trello apart is its interface that uses visuals to make the tasks easier to understand and appear more organized. This tool has features that allow you to add comments on assignments, create checklists, assign deadlines, and many more.
5. 15Five
This tool is another performance management solution that also lets you track and manage your remote team. Apart from the usual remote team management tools, 15Five has an employee feedback feature that clues you in on issues that may be causing problems for your team.