What
is your perspective of 1099 representatives vs. working with employees?
Just because you work with
1099 contractors does not mean that they do not need your attention,
management, and leadership. In some ways 1099 contractors need more leadership,
management, and attention.
I am a believer in the
American dream of owning your own business. Let us not confuse ownership with
irresponsibility. Just because you work with business owners does not mean that
you cannot hold them accountable. In some ways I believe the certain contractor
relationships require higher levels of accountability than employees.
When I work with
contractors I increase the level of required daily reporting. You read that
right, daily reporting. I have had people tell me that daily reporting is too
much. They would not work with a company that required daily reporting.
I would say that
this is a good sign that the contractor is not really working hard for you if
they cannot provide daily reporting. “As a mechanism, accountability is a
process in which a person has a potential obligation to explain his/her actions
to another party who has the right to pass judgment on those actions and to
administer potential positive or negative consequences in response to them”
(Vance, Benjamin & Eggett 2015).
There are two tools
I find extremely important in daily accountability:
1.
Google Forms -One tool that I have found to effectively
hold contractors accountable is google forms. I build the specific fields that
I want to track and google converts all the responses to a google sheet. The
form is emailed to the contractor as a link. Every day for the first 30 days I
check the responses and ensure that the contractor is in the habit of
reporting. One of the benefits of collecting this date in a google sheet is
that at any time I can export it to an excel file and manipulate that data to
draw conclusions for my business. “Just in case you’re wondering: Google Forms
is a free and easy web-based application for collecting information through
online surveys and forms. Responses are sent directly to a spreadsheet, which
is set up for easy analysis, and automatically saved and stored on your Google
drive” (Mallette & Barone 2013).
2.
Google Calendar –I have the contractor share their google calendar
with my staff. Now before the complaints roll in about how contractors will
never sync their calendar with you or your staff, let me say this…. If you
intentions is to micro manage the contractor you may find this to be a
difficult option for you. We utilize this tool as a way to support and maximize
the contractor’s “Management is about systems and processes, while leadership
is about influencing people” (Neufeldt, 2014). When your contractors know you
are on their side in improving their profitability, they will be more
understanding about access to their calendar.
Without access to the
personal data of your contactor base it is hard to provide feedback and
suggestions for improvement. This issue is not about micromanagement, the issue
is about transparency. With a true partnership with your independent
contractors you can help lead and improve their business. If you are like me
you have a manager or a team of managers supervising your contractors. Some
things you may want to offer in return for the transparency is as follows:
1.
Business
building support
2.
Brand
development support
3.
Technology
support
4.
Software
support
5.
Assistants
or access to employees for support
6.
Additional
compensation
7.
Great
culture
It is your job to ensure
productivity. I is your job to design the systems that produce the results you
desire. When people first start with you is the best time to get them in the
habit of utilizing your systems. You do not need to look at the data every day.
You just need to make sure that you are getting the communication you need to
make good business decisions.
I often work with
organizations to develop good reporting tools to gain insight into the
effectiveness of their leadership among employees and independent
contractors.
References
Mallette, M., &
Barone, D. (2013). On Using Google Forms. Reading Teacher, 66(8),
625-630. doi:10.1002/trtr.1169
Neufeldt, P. (2014).
Lucrative Leadership. Leadership Excellence Essentials, 31(11), 44.
Vance, A., Benjamin
Lowry, P., & Eggett, D. (2015). INCREASING ACCOUNTABILITY THROUGH
USER-INTERFACE DESIGN ARTIFACTS: A NEW APPROACH TO ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM OF
ACCESS-POLICY VIOLATIONS. MIS
Quarterly, 39(2),
345-A8.
=======================================================
Nathan Bush, MBA, NALP is
the Senior Property Manager for Affinity
Property Group a Property management firm in
St. Charles, Missouri. He holds an MBA with an
emphasis in accounting from Keller Graduate School of Management and a B.A in
Nonprofit Management from Lindenwood University. In addition to his
degrees, he holds a Missouri real estate license. He is currently a member of
SCORE which is a nonprofit organization that serves to mentor start-up and
growing businesses. Lastly, Nathan wrote the book Leadership
Coaching as a Strategy for Employee Development and has spoken at conferences
on the topic of leadership.
For more information
visit: www.nathanbushmba.com
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