In this episode James Mackay shares the concept of “hire fast, fire fast” and how weeding out problem employees early can save you time and money. Check out http://outsourcing101course.com to sign up for The Free Outsourcing 101 Course that includes video tutorials and much more!

In this episode we are going to uncover one of the most important aspects of outsourcing: how to handle problem freelancers.

We can break this up into a few parts:

Let’s go through each section now and I’ll explain how and why I do each of these things. 

Most outsourcers are running their own show. Every dollar is important and we don’t have the time or money to waste on outcomes that don’t achieve what they are supposed to.

We can put in place methods to hire the right freelancer. We can institute systems to make sure we give over a great project brief to our employees. We can even draw sketches and designs to make things as clear as possible. 

But sometimes things just don’t work out.

So what can we do? How do we fix this before we slide into a massive pool of oblivion, also known as “I give up”. The good news is, you don’t have to waste money. We can fix this pretty easily.

It’s never fun when someone rips you off and that’s often the feeling you get when your freelancers get paid but don’t deliver what you expect. 

Upfront, you need to have ticked off a few things:

It’s not unusual for freelancers to say what you want to hear: they know exactly what you want, that they have the skills to do it and they will have it delivered on time.

Have you ever heard of the concept of “hire fast, fire fast”? So we have already spent a significant amount of time figuring out how to hire the best freelancers we can, so we won’t go through that again. What we will do, however, is adapt our saying a little and change it to “Hire fast, fire faster”.

Now don’t get me wrong, it won’t always mean you need to hire your freelancers, but you have to nip the problems in the bud early, so they don’t end up costing you lots of time and money.

I’ll give you an example…

Once I wanted to get an animated explainer video done. I wrote the script and even sourced the sound effects. I thought I had laid everything out for the animator, as much as I could.

I hired the freelancer and then let him get stuck into the job. Unfortunately, I had a few things on my plate and I wasn’t able to track his work to make sure he was doing the right thing. 

Remember, Upwork has a feature where I can see screenshots of what my freelancers are working on. It’s very cool and very good for this kind of thing. 

If I had bothered to look or I had bothered to ask for a daily report, I could have saved myself a lot of time and money.

The freelancer had gone off and started designing a video in totally the wrong format! I wanted a black felt on whiteboard style thing and he was doing a full colour computer animation style movie.

So here’s the first tip: stay right on top of what the freelancer is doing. I don’t mean micro-manage everything they do, but at least take the time to get a report, or check for yourself.

And there I was: I had an animation for my product that didn’t fit with the other movies so it was totally out of place. But it was my fault because I never actually specified I wanted white on black. I assumed he would do the same. That was my problem: I assumed!!

When a freelancer isn’t delivering what they should be, or they are working slowly or the result isn’t what you expect, you need to communicate that clearly and in a timely manner.

Send them a message. Be firm but respectful and indicate that you are unhappy with the current situation. You should make it clear that the problem requires resolution.

In some countries you need to give employees 3 written warnings before you can fire them. This is not the case with freelancers. If you have just hired someone for a job and you are testing them out, you can tell pretty quickly if they are the right fit.

As an example, I had 4 podcast episodes that I need transcribing. I knew I had more episodes to transcribe so I wanted to find a good transcriptionist. So, I hired 4 transcriptionists and gave them all the same instructions. Double line spaced, Calibri font, 10 point size. Identify each speaker, etc etc. The only thing that was different was the audio file.

They got to work and I could quickly see how different they were. One guy kept asking questions. One girl wanted to know the font. Both of these raised suspicions because it’s a pretty easy job, so the red flag was up early. Now, I figured it would take 2 hours to transcribe 30 minutes of audio. Sure enough, one girl delivered her word doc file just after two hours.

She had formatted it nicely. She had proof read it and followed all my instructions. Perfect. She was the only one to deliver the file to me on the same day.

Unfortunately, I don’t have time or the inclination to keep people on staff when they can’t follow simple instructions or take to long to deliver. So I thanked the other three transcriptionists for their work and ended their contracts. Because this was early in the relationship, there was no problem. I lost nothing by ending their contracts and I had not committed to further work, so there was no problem. Don’t be afraid to shop around for the freelancer that best suits your requirements. You’ll find them.

Then, of course, there’s the kind of trouble that arises after you have been employing a freelancer for a long time and they work they are delivering isn’t right. You have sent sternly worded emails to correct the behavior. You have threatened to end the contract.

But there’s a problem: you might have already spent thousands and thousands of dollars and you haven’t got a product yet. So what do you do now?

This is a super tricky situation, mainly because of a phenomenon called “feature creep”. With a large, long term project the specifications and requirements will change over time. For example, if you are getting a website built, it’s likely that by the end of the project, the website looks and operates differently to what you originally anticipated. And that’s ok, because sometimes before you start a project you won’t know exactly what you’re looking for, so you adapt and change.

But here’s the problem: if you gave the developer the original spec sheet and only made changes by email, you’re in a hard spot. With the contract arrangements on a fixed price contract, the developer only has to deliver what was in the original spec sheet. That’s what you both signed off on, right, and agreed the price to. And if you’ve gone and added the features along the way, you might think what you’re adding would make no material difference but in actual fact it might be fundamentally changing the way the website operates. Therefore, the developer might not make the changes for you and they only have to deliver what was in the original brief.

I suggest you make the changes to the brief and get the developer to sign off as you go. If they are happy to make the extra changes without adding extra zeroes to the balance sheet, then that’s great.

Where it gets even trickier is where you start issuing new feature instructions to the developer and they go ahead and start implementing them. They might not say anything about extra charges or that it affects your program. But don’t take their work as tacit approval that they agree with where it’s going. Unless you get them to agree to a contract change, you have to wear it. They might only be helping because they want a successful contract, nit because they think it’s good.

To be fair, there should be a degree of onus on the freelancer to bring to your attention that your spec changes are outside their remit. But they don’t have to, so don’t go looking to blame them.

If you have changed the brief and not had them officially sign it off, then you’ll have some trouble.

On the other hand, if they simply have not delivered the product even though it was perfectly laid out and spec’d and signed off, then you are in a really good spot. Now you have the right to go back to the freelancer and demand they finish the job immediately or give your money back.

You might need to get Upwork’s adjudication involved but it’s certainly worth the effort if you’re talking about a lot of money.

The take away would be this: if you are struggling with freelancers who are not working to your standard, don’t tolerate it. Address it as early as possible and try to figure something out.

Hire fast, fire faster.

Thanks again for joining me, my fellow and future outsourcers! I hope this information has been somewhat helpful on your journey into outsourcing. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can get all the tips and tricks on how to outsource work so you’ve got more time to do what you love.