According to statistics, 74 percent of employers think that remote working is going to be the new normal.
Remote and freelance work has a host of benefits, both for employees and companies. Workers report higher levels of productivity and happiness. And companies can achieve enhanced agility and substantial overhead savings.
However, there are a variety of challenges that come with managing a flexible workforce. These include communication breakdowns, centralized decision-making, disorganization, and more.
Fortunately, an FMS can help you solve these issues and increase productivity.
Not sure what an FMS is? Keep reading to find out why you need to utilize an FMS for managing your flexible workforce.
What Is An FMS?
FMS stands for “freelancer management system.”
An FMS is a tool or platform for managing freelancers, contractors, and flexible workforces.
It consolidates and streamlines all of the financial, legal, and operation components of working with freelancers, gig workers, contractors, etc.
Here at JobBliss, our FMS also gives you access to the JobBliss Marketplace. Here you can source new freelance talent to incorporate into your flexible workforce.
Besides this, with JobBliss you also get a centralized overview of all projects, both past, and present. You can see all history, both financial and project-related. You can also add new contract resources to your database and group and organize teams.
You can also onboard and save contracts and documents by project or resource.
These functionalities make it easy for managers to work with external talent. They can post projects, access approved resources, or onboard new freelancers.
Why Your Company Needs To Start Using An FMS
Like we mentioned above, freelance and remote work is famous for increasing productivity rates. However, there are some inefficiencies that can develop.
Without an FMS, managing a growing workforce of freelancers and contractors can become overwhelmingly complex. Managers end up wasting time:
- Hunting for documents
- Carrying out inefficient onboarding processes
- Checking up on projects
- Dealing with invoices
Contingent workers also come with a maze of possible legal pitfalls. As well as log-in issues, IP issues, and more.
Here are some of the ways that having an IMS can eradicate these problems.
An FMS Makes It Easier To Find New And Existing Freelancers
Tapping into freelance talent can save companies time and money and make your operations more agile. However, if you don’t have a streamlined process for this, finding and onboarding freelancers can be heavily time-consuming.
If you’re utilizing an external recruitment agency, you might also be wasting money on fees and markups.
With an FMS like JobBliss, companies can increase their speed to market with a private, searchable database. Through this, they can reduce time spent finding and procuring contract resources and freelancers.
Consolidated Resources
Besides this, you can also take advantage of existing talent in your database. JobBiss gives you access to all the freelancers and contractors your company has worked with in the past.
Instead of asking Joe from design for the contact details for that freelancer he worked with last year, you can access everything you need to rehire them right within your JobBbliss dashboard.
By consolidating resources like this you can cut down on a lot of wasted time, and have a clear overview of existing resources and your past projects with them.
Centralized Access To Invoices, Contracts, And Onboarding Processes
Another advantage of using an FMS is centralized access to documents, invoices, and onboarding materials.
This can improve and speed up a lot of the processes that commonly create friction between employers and freelancers. For instance, centralized, organized access to freelancer invoices helps managers ensure that freelancers get paid timeously.
This is important for maintaining good relationships with contractors and ensuring your projects remain their top priority.
When it comes to onboarding, having a comprehensive, complete, and standardized set of onboarding materials is vital. Not only does it save managers time, but it also ensures freelancers don’t get sent old materials.
If your managers are working from things like shared folders, it’s very easy for complications to arise with old document versions.
Better Compliance
Along with saving you time, using an FMS can also help you achieve better legal compliance.
When working with multiple freelancers and independent contractors, things can get uncompliant fast if you don’t have strict procedures in place.
With an FMS, you can store all of the required legal documentation in one place. You can also store it according to the project. This helps ensure that all relevant contracts, IP forms, etc are signed before the project commences.
You Can Effortlessly Track Results
Research shows that teleworking and freelancing come with significantly increased productivity. However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t check up on projects and ensure they’re moving forward according to schedule.
Without an FMS, it can be hard to keep tabs on all the active projects you might have running.
Manually checking in with freelancers and contractors might involve emailing them, phoning them, or reaching out on a collaboration tool to have a conversation about the status of the project.
If you have to do this for more than one project, it can eat up valuable amounts of time.
Instead, using an FMS allows you to keep tabs on all your active (and past projects). You get a top-down view of project statuses with just a few clicks.
If you feel like a project needs more human resources, you can quickly and easily source and invite resources to a project.
Keeping track of outcomes is one of the most important parts of managing a flexible workforce. Before companies tried to maintain increased productivity by monitoring “time spent at the desk.” With a flexible workforce, outcome-based monitoring is a much more effective approach.
Do You Need A Good FMS?
If you’re managing a flexible workforce, you need an FMS. It’s that simple.
An FMS will help you streamline management tasks. It will also increase compliance. As well as make searching for new talent and resources quicker, cheaper, and simpler.
Are you in need of a good FMS? If so, JobBliss is here to fill the gap.
JobBliss gives you ultimate visibility over resources, projects, invoicing, onboarding, and more.
You can get an instant overview of time, money, and effort spent. You can also easily search for new resources in the JobBliss Marketplace, and consolidate existing ones.
Try JobBliss for free today.
