How to make contingent workers feel like family

Jessica Stillman — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 19:27:26 +0000

Call it the gig economy, Generation Flux or Freelance Nation, but whatever you term the rise in independent workers piecing together careers out of multiple projects and employers, the consensus is that an increase in the number of independent pros is a key part of the future of work.

That’s shaping not only the career trajectories of individual knowledge workers, but also the practice of HR and management as teams incorporate more and more contingent workers employed on a project-basis. If you’re running a team made up of a mix of traditional employees and independent contractors, how can you ensure that the independent pros under your supervision feel as engaged and appreciated as long-term employees?

It’s a question author Alexandra Levit tackled recently on the American Express OPEN Forum blog, offering several tips to ensure your freelancers and independent pros feel like family. Her ideas include:

Recognize their value. Contract workers want to make a contribution quickly–they know their livelihood depends on it. So read their status reports and results summaries and illustrate the big picture so they can see how their work is fueling a greater mission.

Treat them like employees. When a contingent worker needs training to complete a new type of responsibility or keep current in her field, facilitate it. Give regular performance evaluations and gather survey feedback just as you would for any full-time employee. If you’re happy with his work, reward him by providing access to other people and opportunities within the organization. Don’t make your contract workers feel like a vendor who should be lucky to be working with your company and can replaced at any minute.

Engage in team building. Remote workers are more effective when they have solid relationships with their co-workers. If it’s feasible, introduce your virtual contract workers to each other and to their full-time team members in person, as this will build rapport and engender greater trust and cooperation. You should also invite remote contingent workers to visit your office, or pop into their locations from time to time. This shows that you actually care enough about the relationship to behave like a manager.

Don’t create a subculture. In their text Essentials of Organizational Behavior, Timothy Judge and Stephen Robbins suggest that subcultures often develop in organizations to reflect common problems, situations or experiences. What you don’t want is for a negative contingent worker culture to develop in the absence of guidance from management. If your contingent workforce is to be effective, your company’s leadership must go out of its way to ensure that members feel welcome and are effectively integrated into the larger organizational culture.

For more info on these tips, as well as statistics on the rise of independent workers, check out the complete post.

What tips would you add to Levit’s list?

Image courtesy of Flickr user SuziJane.

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Be passionate about work: No job change required

Jessica Stillman — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:01:52 +0000

When it comes to work, it’s natural to think of passion as a function of what you do. We speak easily of passion for an activity or topic of interest, like when we say, ‘he’s passionate about photography’ or ‘she’s passionate about design.” As a consequence, many of us wonder if passion isn’t limited to a few driven, talented or just plain lucky professionals. But is finding that thing you really love to do the only way to bring passion to your workday?

Not according to a short but interesting piece Alexandra Levit recently posted to her blog, Water Cooler Wisdom. In it, she comments on a book by Richard Chang, called The Passion Plan, which draws a distinction between two kinds of passion:

The Passion Plan describes passion as both content-based (activities like writing, hosting events, or racing cars) or context-based (themes like innovation, nurturing, and risk-taking). Chang says that we can experience both types of passion in our work, and can often find ways to weave our passions into a current job without making a drastic career change.

It’s a powerful idea for those struggling in a job they find less than enthralling. Rather than spend your time daydreaming about making a career change to another gig that suits you better, why not attempt to alter the context of your current job? You could push not only for more of the type of tasks you like best, but also more freedom in terms of where and when you work (and whom you have to interact with regularly), as well as more learning and development to ensure you feel both autonomous and nurtured. Of course, that won’t work if your boss is an inflexible ogre, but these types of changes may be a possibility in many workplaces — you won’t know until you try.

For those struggling to enjoy their jobs, changing how they work may be far more manageable than changing what they do, but the idea that context sometimes trumps content is also a powerful one for managers looking to get the most out of their teams. You may not be able to change what your employees need to get done, but by making changes to the environment in which work is accomplished, you may be able to create a more passionate, and therefore more productive, workforce.

When it comes to passion for work is context as important as content?

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How to make contingent workers feel like family

Be passionate about work: No job change required