Hey everyone, Jason here digital marketing consultant.
And in this outsourcing guide, you're going to learn the five rules of building a highly
productive virtual team.
Timestamp table of contents in the description along with a full playlist on how to use Upwork
to find and hire great freelancers.
So the very first thing we have here is an onboarding process.
When it comes to growing and scaling any sort of team, there's a certain set of information
that's needed for everyone to go from “I don't understand who you are” to “okay,
I understand you, your team, your company, your culture and how things work” and so,
this is a very, very simple process that you can start right now with whoever comes onto
your team next.
And to illustrate this, I'm actually going to show you what our onboarding process looks
like.
So the document you're looking at here, is something that we pretty much send out to
everyone whether it's on an Upwork message or if it's in an email, and it essentially
just says welcome and then we give them the first steps that they need to do in order
to start working with us.
So for us, it's getting their email address so we can add them to whatever applications
that they need, and then we just have a quick introduction of kind of how we work and then
some videos of how we organize our files, how to use our project manager and then anything
else that's really important also LastPass as well.
And then we ask them, if they have any questions.
And something that's really important to note about this is I’ll link up in the description
to a playlist that goes through the four digital business quadrants.
And we actually directly link people to the YouTube videos on this channel to show them
how we go about organizing things.
So if you follow this channel for any length of time, I highly recommend that you use videos
on this channel or other channels that you like, because you don't necessarily have to
come up with all the information your self.
And so it's really great about this is it make sure that when someone joins your team,
everyone knows how things are organized, everyone knows where documents are, everyone knows
how to use whatever project management application you have and knows how they should be communicating
with people.
So it's really important to make sure that everyone is on the same page and it reduces
the friction, when you first bring someone on board, which makes hiring a lot less painful.
Now rule number two, is something I like to call “silos”, and that is making sure
that everyone on the team knows what they need to do, they have what they need and so
there's no need for constant communication.
Now, don't get me wrong.
Communication it's very important especially in a virtual environment.
But over communication and communication all the time, is actually going to be detrimental
to your productivity and everyone else's productivity.
So this silo technique is something that worse it have developed internally and essentially
what it means is making sure that everyone can do everything they need without interrupting
someone else.
Now, if it's a new project or your work, you need to be working one-on-one with someone,
then go ahead and schedule an actual meeting, or what I personally do is I have an hour
a day I what I call “internal office hours” where everyone knows that hour I'm available
for questions, I'm actively answering.
And then after that I go back into my silo, making YouTube content or working on client
and accounts.
And I highly recommend you follow this process as well.
Now you may be wondering how do you make sure that people don't need to ask you questions,
while they're doing their work.
Well, this is the something where you need to think about inputs and outputs.
So when you hire someone or you give someone a project, you probably have a clear picture
of what you want at the end of it.
If you hire a writer, you want a blog post, if you hire a video editor, you want an edited
video, right?
Well, whatever that particular project or task is, just like there's an output there's
an input.
And so we use this very, very basic table internally where we look at whatever the position
is.
So in this particular example, we have a writer a proofreader and a graphic designer, and
then we think about “okay, what do they need in order to be successful doing whatever
job or tasks that they have?”
Well, the writer if they're turning a YouTube video into a blog post, they're gonna need
the original video, they'll need all of the notes and the graphics and everything that
went into creating the video, so they understand how to turn that video into a blog post, whereas
the proofreader they just need a rough draft of the blogpost, and the original YouTube
video.
And finally we have the graphic designer is just going to need a rough draft and then
understand and some style guides on how to design the specific thumbnail.
And then that way, the graphic designer when they're given their task in their project
manager, they have everything that they need, and they don't have to ask questions.
The only questions they're gonna ask is “do you think this graphic looks good?”
And you say yes or no.
And then they can move on with their work and you can move on with yours.
Now, I know this might seem rudimentary, but it's going to be so, so helpful to you.
And people that you hire are going to be so thankful that they don't have to get feedback
or ask questions at every step of the process, Especially, when you're dealing with multiple
time zones.
And there's nothing worse than giving a project to someone or thinking that they have everything
and then the next day waking up to find out they didn't do, they didn't get anything done,
because they didn't have the one file that they needed or whatever.
So making sure you look at inputs and outputs, specifically that input column is going to
help make sure that everyone on your team can be a silo and then you come back together
for your meetings your team discussions and of course brainstorming.
And speaking of brainstorming, that leads me into rule number three and that is clearly
establishing communication norms, because no one; and I mean nobody likes feeling like
they are on call.
And so there are three parts to establishing your communication norms, and this is making
sure that everyone on the team clearly understands where they should be communicating, you empower
everyone to contact anyone on the team with a question.
And number three clearly in writing outline what the response time requirements are.
And these three rules this can just be a simple document, this can even be part of your onboarding
process, but you want everyone on your team to know how long they have, before you're
going to get upset that they don't respond and this could be different for different
team members.
And then also, you want to make it clear that they're allowed to talk to anyone else on
the team.
And of course, number one, make sure there's a clear place to communicate, because there
could be really hard if you're working with someone and you send them an email with a
document and then they comment inside the document, and then you send them an instant
message or whatever.
Then the conversations all over the place.
So when we get to the software that we use at the end, you'll see where we actually keep
all the conversations in one place.
But it's really, really important that you make these communication norms for your team
standard.
So everyone knows exactly where they're supposed to communicate, who they're allowed to communicate
to which should be everyone.
And then of course how long they have to respond.
So it removes all that anxiety of “oh my gosh!
I don't know if my boss is gonna get angry, if I wait an hour or two or if I go to the
grocery store and then come back and respond”, because that actually does happen to some
the eight players on your team, they're actually going to be concerned about how long it takes
to reply or respond to whatever your questions are or other team members.
So you really, really want to make this clear and you're going to remove a lot of anxiety
and people on your team are gonna be much happier.
Now, if you're getting some value out of this video, go ahead and hit that like button and
subscribe for more deep dive videos just like this one.
Number four is, actually going to go all the way back right before that onboarding process
and that is going to be your hiring.
So something that I highly, highly recommend is, doing auditions for important positions
on your team.
So if you need something one-and-done, I totally understand just posting a job on Upwork or
going to Fiverr, get it done quick move on with life, right?
But if you're looking for someone who's gonna be with you for three six months maybe a year
or more, then it's worth the extra effort to do auditions before you actually make your
hiring decision.
Now I know, that can sound daunting that you're telling me I'm supposed to pay three or four
people a full rate?
Well, no, the good news is you don't have to.
So what we do is, we go through proposals, we use we personally use Upwork and then we
choose the top three to four candidates, and we reach out to them and say “hey, we'd
like to do an audition, we'd like to do it at a discounted rate.
And to date, we haven't had any freelancer reject doing the work at discounted rate”.
That way you have three to four people, do the exact same task and you have an apples-to-apples
comparison of their communication style, how well they understood your directions, and
of course their actual quality of work.
And so this is something that can save you a tremendous; I mean tremendous amount of
headache in the future.
For example, we were trying to hire a copywriter a few months ago, and there was one that just
looked like a star.
Like we were looking at and we thought you know what there's we don't even need to do
auditions this time like this.
This person looks perfect.
And as soon as the audition started, things fell apart.
They were super late getting back to us, they were super late with actually delivering the
final product.
And the final product wasn't even that-- it was so bad, we were we were confused the difference
between what we received in the portfolio.
So you just never know.
So I highly recommend always doing auditions, it's really going to save you a lot of headache.
And of course, the final one number five here is, going to be creating a growth path for
those people that you really want to keep on your team.
Now, we've all been in this situation where we get hired and we really like where we're
working, but we're kind of nebulous on, you don't really know well “what am I gonna
get a raise?”
Or “how do I get a raise?”
Or” can I actually move up in this company?”
Or “if I just stuck here doing this widget thing that I'm doing and I'm never gonna really
go anywhere”.
Well, the growth path is something that you can put together for anyone on your team and
we'll go through an example here in a second, that essentially cuts through all of that
fog.
That makes it really clear hey, you know what we really value what this is you to the freelancer,
because I keep going back and forth, right?
So you to the freelancer or the contractor, “hey, we really value your work.
We really want you to stay here.
Here's some other projects…” or “...here's what we think you can improve upon or skills
we think we can work with you to essentially grow into and then we can pay you a higher
rate”.
So let's go ahead and go through a kind of template here and of course you can pause
the screen and copy for yourself, but this is essentially what our growth path looks
like.
And we essentially have their primary role and then we list out the other projects that
they're actively working on.
And then we asked the team member “hey, what are you interested in learning or what
kinds of projects or what kinds of things do you really want to do more of”.
And so that's what the interests section is, and then the project idea is you as the team
leader or you can delegate this to your project manager is to based upon their work or based
upon what they've told you in the past, you come up with ideas or projects or other roles
that they could take responsibility for.
And then you can kind of go back and forth and talk about what might actually be a good
fit for them, because if you can create; if you're really happy with their work, and you
can give them their dream job, it's a pretty good situation.
And then once you've done that, you can go ahead and create an advancement plan, so you
can-- talk you can create education goals with them, you can create productivity goals
with them.
So if this this productivity section is really good if someone if you're looking at increasing
someone's hourly rate.
Well, if they're going to be paid more then they need to actually be faster at what they
do, right?
So it still takes some three hours to do the same thing, then it doesn't really make sense
to pay them more unless that three-- in that three hours they're really giving you more
quality.
Hopefully that made sense.
And then of course, creating a compensation schedule at the end to show, “hey if we're
able to achieve these results and you're able to do this, you'll actually get a raise”
and so there's concrete in writing “hey, you know what if you achieve this by January
of next year, we'll give you a dollar raise of 50 cent or 25 raise an hour, whatever it
may be”, and so this is a very great way to keep those two try and keep to those eight
players on your team and just cut through that fog of “do I really have a growth path
here with this particular company?”
And of course you don't have to do this with everyone on your team, it's just something
you can do to make sure that you keep people that you really really want.
So that does it for the five rules for building a highly productive and happy team of a players,
go ahead and comment below with any questions or suggestions things that you would add to
this list that have been helpful in terms of keeping really great freelancers or finding
really great freelancers.
Your comments and questions and of course stories are going to help others, be more
successful in building their team.
So go ahead and hit that like button, subscribe for more in depth virtual team building videos
just like this one.
And until the next, keep building the business you love.