While outsourcing specific skills can be a great alternative for businesses, the realities of human resources can still sometimes rear their ugly head. Just as new hires for in-house positions can turn out to be unproductive, outsourcing freelance placements have that same unfortunate potential.
While nobody can ever completely avoid the chance of outsourcing failure, there are plenty of things an outsourcing manager can look for as ‘early warning’ signs in a freelance contractor. If you ignore these outsourcing omens, chances are you’ll soon be throwing good money after bad. However, if you heed these warning signs when you see them, you can adapt quickly and increase your chances of successfully course-correcting with your freelance contractors.
Rather than letting these issues scare you away from outsourcing to freelance contractors, use the following tips to help your outsourcing outcomes to be successful. Ultimately, these warning signs are relevant for in-house jobs as well as those jobs which you are outsourcing.
1 - Slowing response time - It should never take more than 1 business day for a freelance contractor to respond to email regarding their outsourcing assignment. If it suddenly starts to take longer, all is not well on the freelance end. Press the issue with your freelance contractor, find out why the responses are taking longer. Demand a faster response concerning your outsourcing assignments and make sure it’s just a temporary blip.
2 - Hesitation to show work - An outsourcing manager should always be able to see the freelance contractor's work in progress. There’s no such thing as “it’s not ready for you to see yet”. You may be an understanding manager, but you have a right and need to ask to see the freelance work in progress to make sure you like where it’s going.
3 - Missed milestone - While it's not the end of the world, if a milestone is missed, an outsourcing project manager must understand why. Probe into the root cause of the missed freelance deadline. Was it too aggressive? Were new issues or requirements discovered? Were the reasons valid? If an outsourcing deadline is missed, discuss the issue openly with your freelance provider and come to an agreement about why it was missed.
4 - Dramatic increase in hours per day - If the number of freelance hours worked per day increases unexpectedly, it could be a sign of outsourcing trouble. Maybe it’s crunch time and you don’t realize how far behind the development is on the job.
5 - Rapid decrease in hours per day - The same goes for rapid unexpected decreases in freelance hours worked. Is there another outsourcing job or other commitments that your freelance provider has committed to? Inquire. Make sure you know why?
6 - Increases in offline time - If your freelance provide is using a time tracking system, have they been logging all of the time online with detailed work memos? Is this changing suddenly? Do you see more requests for offline freelance time or less detailed work memos. As an outsourcing manager, you should dig in and find out why.
7 - Requests for additional resources - If you're outsourcing work to an IT firm and unexpectedly get a request from the company to add additional freelance resources or change team members (especially the team lead), it's often a bad sign. While their request for additional resources may be necessary to meet deadlines, make sure you know why the initial outsourcing plan isn’t working. If it’s a change in freelance team members, be aware that this could lead to further delays as a result of a new ramp-up time.
8 - Growing tensions - This is possibly the worst warning sign that an outsourcing relationship is not working. Are tensions increasing in your communication with the freelance provider? Are conversations shifting from chat to email to faxed correspondence? Tensions between outsourcing manager and freelance provider can flare up if a job is danger of failing. It’s critical to keep an open line of communication and maintain mutual respect to work together through the outsourcing project issues. If tensions are increasing, course correct immediately.
So, how do you as an outsourcing identify these potential problems? By staying active in managing your freelance team, by being hands-on and scheduling a regular weekly or even daily outsourcing meeting via chat, phone, or web conference. Monitor work, outsourcing progress, and productivity on a regular schedule. Set expectations from day 1 about how you and your freelance providers will work together on an outsourcing project.
Ultimately, when companies fear that things are turning sour with their outsourcing projects, I often tell people to “trust their gut”. If you have that funny feeling that things aren’t going well, investigate and find out what’s going on. If you’re not happy, make the tough decisions quickly rather than waiting and waiting for things to get worse. It's still human resources after all, and the ultimate success of the outsourcing project is the primary and sole objective.
