Should Freelancers and Subcontractors Have a Performance Review?
If you hire freelancers or subcontractors to complete work for you, should you be measuring their performance? Yes! To me the philosophy around ensuring effective performance is the same no matter whether you are talking about an employee, volunteer or freelancer.
You need to:
- Discuss what is to be delivered by when.
- Have clearly defined project briefs and hold people accountable to them.
- Start with a small challenging test project to see if the person has the skills, experience, and attitude that you need for your project (and the communication skills to ask clarifying questions and the willingness to keep you informed of progress and roadblocks).
- And make 100% clear which are the non-negotiable performance bits – the bits for which the contract will be terminated if they fail to deliver on.
The biggest problem with freelancers and subcontractors are not delivering on deadlines and failing to read the brief, which means they miss key elements or do them incorrectly. Make sure a discussion of these problems forms a key part of your performance discussion, highlight that these are grounds for termination of the contract and put in place ways of tracking performance.
These can then form a simple one-page summary of discussion. The bottom line is everyone’s performance should be up for discussion – even freelancers and subcontractors.
Until next time
Ingrid Cliff
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