Management Archives - Yolanda Lau

Updated on February 24, 2024

Tips For Scaling Customer Success

If you’re building a startup, you’re probably wondering how to start and scale customer success (CS). While the first step is to hire the right first customer success lead, the next step is scaling customer success to increase the impact and turn CS into a profit center that increases revenue. Here are my top tips to help you scale customer success at your startup. Hopefully, your first CS hire has already created a culture of operational excellence and started accelerating your one-to-many strategy, as most of my tips for scaling customer success rely heavily on customer success ops.

Meet customers where they are.

Scaling customer success means you’ll need to make it more effective and efficient. At Liquid, we’ve found that it’s imperative to meet customers where they are and where they prefer to engage. While some customers enjoy talking to a customer success manager, others prefer to get help on their own online. Some users prefer emailing, while others like chat. Some prefer personalized meetings, while others find more value in attending group office hours or webinars. Offering one-to-many experiences increases CS productivity — but more importantly, offering a multitude of options allows your customers to get help in ways that they perceive to be most valuable and efficient. Add new initiatives prudently; do so only when you have confidence that it fills a need. In addition, you should be analyzing the metrics of each new initiative to assess effectiveness. Experiment and iterate.

Build a knowledge base.

At Liquid, we recently released a customer-facing knowledge base (KB) based on customer requests for a dedicated help center to help themselves and to direct their additional users to train themselves up. Since its launch, KB usage has grown rapidly while also decreasing the volume of communications from customers. To be clear, our KB doesn’t prevent users from contacting humans — it simply helps users help themselves before asking for help.

When building out your KB, start with the most complex features and sticking points — get feedback from CSMs and support staff about what needs to be covered. As new support requests come in, support staff should create new KB articles. Similarly, as new features get released, work with your product team to add new KB articles at each release. Always include images and videos to be inclusive of different learning preferences. Don’t wait to put out your KB; in my experience, it’s better to put out a 60% completed solution and iterate and add to it.

Lastly, look at KB metrics to gather additional insight. For example, what are people clicking on? This might give you insight into problem areas. Who is looking? A customer with lots of KB views might need extra attention; a customer with a sudden drop in views might be at risk of churning out. What are people searching for? Repeat searches might mean your product team needs to resolve some underlying issues.

Create (and automate) repeatable systems and processes.

Scaling customer success also means dealing with an increasing number of customers. To manage volume, you need repeatable systems and processes. Operationalizing processes by creating playbooks and other documentation helps your team provide consistent service quickly and efficiently. When done properly, this also allows you to provide pooled CS where customers are not assigned a single CSM but instead get help from whoever is available. Start working on this early and iterate often.

As you work on this, also segment your customers and determine how your approach will differ for each segment. For some companies, it may make sense to segment by account value but for others, segmenting by behavior may be more suitable. Growth potential should also be considered in segmentation, along with other factors specific to your industry, company and product.

Another way to improve the efficiency of your CS department is to take your repeatable processes and systems one step further and automate where possible. Be strategic in your use of automation. At Liquid, we use Zapier to automate a few customer success emails and have a few other automations to provide more value to our customers at scale.

Separate customer support and customer success.

While customer success is meant to be proactive, customer support or customer service is reactive by nature. When the same team members manage both support/service and success, the most urgent requests (typically service requests) get worked on first. Unfortunately, this means the proactive work — of managing customer health and actively reaching out to customers who may be at risk of churning — sometimes falls lower down the list. In addition, the skills needed for customer service are different from those for customer success. From my experience, companies achieve better results when separating the reactive customer service team from the proactive customer success team early on.

Know when to grow your customer success team.

Dave Blake, CEO of Client Success, has some great tips on when to add additional staff to your customer success team. Specifically, he recommends looking at three factors:

• Annual Contract Value (ACV) Target Per CSM: Each CSM should be handling about $2 million in ACV.

• Product Complexity: The more complex your product, the fewer accounts each CSM can handle.

• Volume Of Customers Per CSM: Each CSM can generally only create meaningful relationships with about 50 customers (sometimes a bit more if automation is used).

Assess these factors against your own product to determine when it’s time to grow your customer success team. I’ve found that about 30 customers is the sweet spot — with automation required to manage more than that.

Scaling customer success will allow you to deliver more value to your customers, keep them happy and ultimately get them to grow their business with you. Whether you start with operationalizing processes, adding automations, building out a knowledge base, or separating customer service from customer success, be sure to meet customers where they are. Deliver more value in their preferred channels and your customers will eagerly turn into advocates, referring new customers.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

How To Give Feedback To Freelancers, Contractors, And Remote Workers

By Yolanda Lau

Communication is key to building strong working relationships, whether with employees or with freelancers. While most organizations have built-in methods and procedures for giving feedback to employees, such as regular 1:1 meetings, I’ve found that many companies lack processes for giving feedback to freelancers, contractors, or other members of their virtual talent bench. Given that working with freelancers tends to be temporary, it’s too easy to skip over providing feedback to your liquid workforce.

Understand When To Give Feedback

During each project, review the scope of work frequently to make sure milestones are met. If your freelancers or consultants are falling flat, say so. Most freelancers crave feedback, as they know feedback helps them improve their work product and increases the likelihood of a successful outcome for both parties. If they’re providing valuable contributions, be sure to thank them.

At the end of each project, spend some time going over what went well during the engagement and also what could have been improved. These retrospective meetings help ensure future engagements run smoothly.

Whenever possible, critique in private and praise in public. No one likes to be publicly called out for failures or mistakes. Critique publicly, and you’re likely to be met with defensiveness. This should go without saying, but if you’re in a bad mood, give yourself some time to clear your head — when giving feedback while upset, your tone will likely make more of an impact than the actual content of the message.

Set Expectations

The first step in giving feedback to your freelancers, contractors, and other remote workers is setting expectations. Make sure you’ve got a clear scope of work with detailed milestones and timelines. The scope should be detailed enough so that all parties understand what is expected and when items are due.

Once you’re ready to give feedback, Daniel Coyle, author of several books on talent, suggests starting each feedback conversation with one magical 19-word phrase: “I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations, and I know that you can reach them.”

This statement helps your freelancers, contractors, and virtual talent bench — and even your employees — feel valued and connected to your business.

Skip The Compliment Sandwich

In my career advising startup founders and small business owners, I’ve known all too many managers whose preferred method of providing feedback was the compliment sandwich. This is when you sandwich a negative piece of feedback between two positive pieces. The idea is that you don’t want to get anyone down and that focusing on the positive helps blunt the negative.

I’ve found that the feedback sandwich both undermines the constructive (negative) feedback being conveyed while also making people suspicious of positive feedback. Instead, follow these steps to give clear, concise, specific, and constructive feedback after asking for permission.

Ask For Permission

Before you start with Coyle’s magical 19 words, ask for permission to have a feedback conversation. This can, and should, be as simple as asking a question like: Do you have 20 minutes to talk about X? If the answer is yes, then you can move on to those magical 19 words. If the answer is no, then ask when a good time to talk about X is and schedule a time on the calendar. Asking for permission allows the person to prepare mentally for receiving feedback, making the conversation more likely to lead to actionable results.

Start With Statements, Then Ask Questions

Start by stating what you observed, what impact it did or could have, and then ask questions. Try to be objective and refrain from judging or inferring what happened, giving the freelancer, consultant, or contractor time and space to explain. For example: I noticed X, and that could have impacted Y, and I was hoping you could give me your thoughts. This framing can help you uncover additional issues that you may have overlooked. In addition, asking questions can encourage self-reflection — allowing the freelancer, consultant, or contractor to come up with creative solutions for addressing your concerns. Make sure you listen to what they have to say.

Be Specific And Clear

Be specific with your critique as well as your praise. The more specific your feedback, the more likely it is to be actionable and useful. Aim for concise clarity — using too many words to blunt the emotional impact of negative feedback will make your message fuzzy. Be intentional with your words and tone. Avoid overgeneralizing, being judgmental, or making assumptions about intent. When providing negative feedback, make sure the conversation ends with clearly defined next steps for improvement — this is what separates criticism from constructive feedback.

Don’t shy away from giving negative feedback, but strive to give positive feedback more often. Increasing the ratio of positive to negative feedback creates a culture where feedback is valued, not feared. When giving positive feedback, do so with explicit information about what was done well — this helps to reinforce positive behavior. In contrast, vague positive feedback simply makes the receiver feel good.

Ask For Feedback

If you don’t ask for feedback, you’re unlikely to get it. Don’t forget to also ask for feedback from your freelancers, consultants, and independent contractors. Being external to your organization gives them a valuable vantage point. Their outside perspective can help them notice things that employees might miss. In addition, working with many clients means that your liquid workforce may have gleaned insights from working with similar organizations. Prioritize asking for feedback, as this builds the relationships you have with your virtual talent bench. When they start to see you as a partner — and not just a client — they’ll be more likely to make time for your projects.

Create A Culture Of Feedback

Providing candid, thoughtful, and positive feedback is essential to building strong relationships. Plus, having two-way feedback loops builds trust. Creating a culture of feedback generates a high-performing culture, boosting your team’s performance.

Start taking your relationships with freelancers, contractors, and remote workers to the next level.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Best Practices For Manager/Employee 1:1 Meetings

By Yolanda Lau

As more companies switch to remote work, it becomes ever more critical to intentionally connect with our co-workers and employees. While we are all trying to clear our calendars, scheduling weekly one-to-one meetings with every direct report continues to be essential. Even when working with the freelancers and contractors who comprise the liquid workforce, I have found that one-to-one meetings are crucial to a successful working relationship. Consistently great one-to-one meetings are the secret to improving team performance, morale, and company culture.

Emotionally intelligent managers know that people need to feel cared for and valued — people are happiest when they are learning, working on challenging projects, given room to make decisions, and encouraged to use their judgment to do their job. Your goal in one-to-one meetings is to discover how your direct reports are feeling and growing so that you can improve how you coach/mentor/sponsor/support them.

Managers should have a weekly one-to-one scheduled with each direct report. It is understandable if it needs to be rescheduled in a specific week, or if it doesn’t happen from time to time. But in my experience, managers should aim to have one-to-one meetings at least three out of every four weeks. It’s important to have regular check-ins to prevent larger issues from festering, allow for immediate and regular feedback and promote open communication.

Structure And Prompts

Start your one-to-ones with open-ended questions to help you understand how employees are doing, what is on their minds and how you might be able to help.

Check in on the employee’s current progress. Are there big or small successes to celebrate? How is progress tracking versus goals? What resources does the employee need? Ongoing reviews of progress ensure that nothing on a performance review comes as a surprise.

Every few weeks, be sure to dedicate some time to discuss long-term goals and ambitions. For example, ask employees what they view as the next step in their career path and how they see themselves in their roles. This helps you develop your people so that you can promote from within.

Here are some questions you may want to incorporate into your one-to-one agendas. These questions can help you understand how employees are motivated by their work, self-assess their skills, and view their control over their work.

1. Prompts To Understand Purpose/Relatedness

What are you most proud of?
Where do you see your job linked to our company’s goals?
When have your contributions to our company’s overall goals inspired you?
What can I do to make you feel that your work is meaningful and crucial to our company’s overall goals?
What feedback is the most meaningful/impactful that you have received?
What challenges/barriers are you facing, and how can I help remove them?
What part of your daily activities do you feel wastes your time?

2. Prompts To Grow Mastery/Competence

What is something you learned this week?
If you reflect on one piece of work product, where are you most proud of that work?
What is something you will do differently next time?
If you were to critique a recent project you completed, what grade would you give yourself? Why?
Are you celebrating the things you did well?
Are you avoiding anything you didn’t do well?
How can you become even better at…?
What can I, as a leader, do to help you to become even better?

3. Prompts To Support Autonomy

Do you have enough space to perform?
Are you able to make decisions that help use your experience and move your work forward?
Are you able to use your experience/expertise to help the company make good decisions?
Do you have the right level of influence to feel you are having an impact/adding value?
Are there things we should change so you feel like you have more ownership of your work?
What types of decisions do you feel comfortable making yourself? When do you hesitate to decide on your own?

As you start to wrap up your one-to-ones, make sure to ask questions that confirm any discussed actions and identify follow-ups for the next meeting. For example:

What are you committing to between now and the next time we meet?
What can I help you with between now and the next time we meet?
Is there anything we didn’t cover that you’d like to discuss next time?

As a manager, it’s your job to create environments and conditions that put employees where their intrinsic motivations are and let them be productive. Committing to regular weekly one-to-one meetings — with employees as well as freelancers — will help you develop your workforce and support their success. Investing this time in discussions with your employees will not only enable them to achieve their goals but is also essential for you to be successful as a leader and manager of people.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Time For HR To Manage The On-Demand Workforce

By Yolanda Lau

In many companies, freelancers are often the “hidden” workforce. The human resources (HR) team is not always involved in the hiring and management of freelancers. But as organizations shift to being project-based versus role-based, HR must take the lead in managing the on-demand workforce. We must rethink the role of HR in enabling the future of work.

I find there are five key areas that HR leaders should first focus on as they take the lead on managing the on-demand workforce.

Establish Hiring Practices

The HR team has the best expertise for hiring and engaging freelancers. Your recruiting resources are experts at sourcing and assessing talent — managers should be leveraging these recruiters to find the best freelance talent.

And just as your company has defined practices for hiring employees, hiring practices also must be defined for engaging freelancers and independent contractors. It’s just as critical when working with freelancers.

Set the minimum standards for what needs to be completed before a freelancer can be engaged for the first time. For example, specify that at least two interviewers should speak to the freelancer to assess qualifications and fit. Always require background and reference checks. Decide whether a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is mandatory or define the conditions that trigger this requirement. Establish benchmarks for hourly rate ranges for the types of freelancers your company will most frequently engage.

Provide Internal Training

The HR department should also provide training for managers on best practices for working with freelancers and independent contractors. This training is important for boosting project success rates and ensuring that managers understand compliance requirements.

When working with freelancers and independent contractors, managers need to be aware of local, state, and federal regulations regarding engaging freelancers. For example, the IRS considers the behavioral control, financial control, and relationship of the parties when evaluating worker classification. Understanding the regulations is critical to ensure workers are not misclassified as freelancers instead of employees, which exposes your company to legal penalties and liabilities.

Standardize The Onboarding Process

It’s a best practice for companies to have standardized onboarding processes for their employees. The HR team should establish a standard onboarding process for freelancers and independent contractors. This process will be distinct from the employee onboarding process and reflect the different needs and requirements related to freelancers.

For example, rather than collecting a W-2 during onboarding, your company will need to collect a W-9 from U.S. freelancers or a W-8 from foreign freelancers. Your onboarding process should include all the essential documents for a freelance engagement, like an executed contract, NDA, etc. Onboarding should also include the critical “welcome” elements, such as information on any tools that the freelancer will need to access.

Standardizing the freelancer onboarding process ensures that all the essential documents are completed for every engagement and saves your company significant time.

Set Performance Evaluation Guidelines

Establishing performance evaluation processes and standards is a key element of any HR team’s responsibilities. Performance evaluations with on-demand workers are both similar and different from evaluating employees.

Performance assessments should be done on a project-by-project basis and should include a recommendation as to whether the worker should be considered for future projects. In addition to the project evaluations, the skill sets of each worker should also be tracked. Insights into skill sets help hiring managers source the best fit for upcoming projects from already vetted on-demand talent.

Determine Supporting Tools And Systems

Many companies manage their freelance engagements through a hodgepodge of tools. For example, some companies manage freelancers entirely manually, tracking information in various spreadsheets. Manual management of freelancers can become time-consuming and is prone to errors. And with an assortment of tools, it’s hard to have complete visibility of all freelancer and independent contractor activity and expenses.

The human resources team should take the lead on defining the central tool or system for the company, making it easy for finance, legal, HR, and line managers to collaborate and have complete visibility of on-demand workforce engagements. Freelance and vendor management systems, like the solutions my company offers, provide the integrated capabilities critical for on-demand workforce management.

With a central tool or system, you can more readily develop an external talent bench to support your company. An on-demand talent bench can help your company be much more agile as well as digitally ready.

Leading The Development Of The On-Demand Workforce

HR should be leading the sourcing and development of all talent, not just internal talent. HR leaders have the expertise and the right skills and resources on their teams to develop an on-demand workforce successfully. A blended talent strategy will supplement and complement internal teams. It’s time for HR to lead the transition to the future of work.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

FlexTeam is a mission-based micro-consulting firm, co-founded by Yolanda Lau in 2015, that matches talented mid-career women with meaningful, challenging, temporally flexible, remote project-based work opportunities. FlexTeam’s clients are businesses of all sizes across all industries and sectors. FlexTeam’s most requested projects are competitor / market research, financial models, and investor decks. FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Nine Tips For Leading With Grace And Compassion

By Yolanda Lau

With many companies forecasting a sharp decrease in revenue and profits due to these uncertain times, CEOs and other leaders are under significant pressure. Not only do they have to lead themselves through these challenging times, but they are also responsible for managing and guiding their organizations and executives — and their respective teams — to succeed in stressful times. Leaders must cultivate and promote healthy and resilient mindsets on the current crisis and future crises to come.

By cultivating the following habits and behaviors, CEOs, executives and heads of HR can lead with grace and compassion to create a productive and mindful work atmosphere while positioning their companies for sustainable long-term growth and success.

1. Embrace self-awareness and self-compassion.

Start by being aware that the events of the world have affected you, and give yourself compassion for how you have reacted. Working 80-hour weeks is not sustainable for you or for your team. Deciding to furlough and/or lay off employees is emotionally draining, especially when these are people whom you’ve worked with for a long time who have become like family. Acknowledge your feelings and give yourself the gift of grace. Be kind to yourself. Practicing self-compassion is the first step to compassionate leadership.

2. Develop a gratitude practice.

I believe gratitude makes for more effective leadership. Developing an attitude of gratitude gives leaders the focus needed to quickly pivot in stressful environments and challenging situations, such as those we are all experiencing today. When you pause to practice gratitude, you give your mind, emotions and even your body a moment to recalibrate and become more resilient. This helps clear your mind of distractions, allowing you to more clearly focus on the present and uncover hidden opportunities. In addition, practicing gratitude can contribute to a more positive work environment, allowing your team to work more effectively.

3. Practice and hone emotional intelligence.

Develop your emotional intelligence and encourage your executives to bring their emotions to work. In turn, your executives will encourage their respective teams to fine-tune their emotional intelligence. As a leader, you must manage how you present your emotions while also encouraging the spreading of emotions that can spur higher productivity, increased job satisfaction and better financial performance.

4. Embrace curiosity, open-mindedness and innovation.

Encouraging diversity of thought is critical, especially during a crisis. Being curious allows you to explore challenges and find innovative solutions and opportunities. Encourage teams to think outside the box and be open-minded. This allows you to identify and quickly address new opportunities being created as a result of this crisis. More importantly, this lays a strong foundation for agile growth, positioning your company for future success.

5. Promote mindfulness.

Like emotional intelligence, mindfulness at work starts from compassionate leadership and trickles down through the organization. Learn to be mindful and present in all of your interactions, encouraging your teams to do the same. Leading with mindfulness can help improve overall productivity, decrease stress, lead to increased innovation and create a healthier workplace for all.

6. Practice active, compassionate listening.

Practice active, compassionate listening, especially with your team and direct reports. Listen attentively when your employees speak, taking care to defer judgment. Ask pertinent, open-ended questions and paraphrase when appropriate to show your genuine desire to come to a mutually beneficial understanding. Active listening can build strong relationships and help employees feel less isolated. While many of us are working remotely and decreasing our social interactions, many of us need to feel more connected to others. In addition, during challenging times, it’s more important than ever to insist on regular one-to-one meetings.

7. Encourage asking for help.

There’s a looming mental health crisis coming as a result of these uncertain times. Everyone needs help right now, but it can be challenging for high achievers to ask for help. Start by checking in with employees. Find out how they are doing and encourage them to ask for what they need. Encourage departments to engage a liquid workforce, especially if you have enacted a hiring freeze due to budgetary concerns. Getting your team the on-demand help that they need can help increase productivity and morale.

8. Focus on the present, while keeping an eye on the future.

The goal isn’t to predict the future, but to bolster your company to be better prepared for whatever may come. Make the changes you need to position your company to weather future challenges while staying present and mindful. This too shall pass, just as many other challenges before it has. Focus on positioning your company to become agile so that you can quickly adapt and pivot as the future becomes more clear.

9. Commit to leading with grace and compassion.

You may not feel comfortable demonstrating vulnerabilities, but leaders need to be aware that your team is always modeling the behavior they see. Your employees are looking to you and other leadership to understand what is appropriate. If you appear to be close-minded or insist on doing it all yourself, executives and employees will follow suit. Ineffective leadership can very quickly negatively impact productivity, morale and eventually the bottom line.

However, leaders who are compassionate, mindful and emotionally intelligent active listeners are better equipped to lead their companies through uncertainty and are well-positioned for post-crisis growth and success. When you commit yourself to lead with grace and compassion, you give yourself and your organization the mindset and tools to succeed during any circumstances.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Modern Businesses Need Modern Strategy

By Yolanda Lau

The future of work is rapidly changing and already impacting businesses today with the growth of the liquid workforce. Companies are also facing ever more complex challenges as we are increasingly globally connected. Modern businesses need a modern business strategy built on strategic and operational agility to thrive and grow, especially in today’s turbulent times. To compete successfully, companies need to iterate rapidly and be opportunistic in their approach.

Developing Strategic And Operational Agility

In Harvard Business Review, Donald Sull, senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, wrote, “Business opportunities are not distributed evenly over time. Rather, firms typically face a steady flow of small opportunities, intermittent midsize ones, and periodic golden opportunities to create significant value quickly.” This statement is as true today as when it was first published in 2009 and underlines the importance of strategic and operational agility in any modern business strategy.

Since that time, what has changed for businesses are fundamental shifts in how we work, where we work and what we work on. Covid-19 has rapidly accelerated the shift to remote work, but the future of work is much more than that. Workers, particularly knowledge workers, are increasingly becoming their own bosses. Upwork and the Freelancers Union reported that in 2019, over 57 million people worked as freelancers in the U.S. Similarly, as companies increasingly embrace agile and scrum methodologies, work is becoming more project-based than strictly role-based.

Modern companies dynamically build specialized project teams to tackle different opportunities and challenges. Startups to enterprise-size companies can successfully develop and execute modern business strategy by enabling two key pillars: an agile, flexible workforce and project-based work.

Creating An Agile, Flexible Workforce

As the liquid workforce grows, companies are working with FlexTeam, GLG, Catalant, and other consulting companies or expert marketplaces to develop a blended workforce that consists of a mix of full-time and on-demand (liquid) talent. Human resources leaders are rethinking their approach to building and developing a company’s workforce, shifting to growing a talent-based workforce. With a talent-based mindset, these leaders consider both the near-term and long-term skills and experience needed to support a modern business strategy. The workforce is no longer composed primarily of employees; it’s now an overall talent pool of full-time employees and liquid workers available to tap on demand.

With liquid workers as part of the workforce, companies can nimbly and quickly deploy the right talent to address strategic opportunities and challenges. Knowledge-based workers can swiftly jump in from day one to lead or execute projects. Companies benefit from faster time-to-market for projects and more cost-effectively managing their resources. A blended workforce often yields fresh thinking and new ideas — it can even boost diversity and inclusion for a company.

And while this workforce may be a fluid, yet integral, part of the team, it’s essential to have the right onboarding and processes in place to set up every liquid worker for success. Building strong relationships with your liquid talent is critical for retaining them in your talent network for future engagements.

Shifting To Project-Based Work

Project-based work has long been supported by traditional, big consulting companies. However, working with big consulting companies frequently poses challenges for modern businesses. These companies often move too slowly; the future of work requires modern businesses to move quickly to take advantage of opportunities or resolve challenges. Additionally, consulting companies can be expensive to engage, particularly for smaller companies.

Modern businesses are increasingly relying on liquid talent for project-based work. These knowledge workers can bring a new perspective and deep expertise and can quickly jump in and help these businesses address specific questions, challenges, and opportunities, often through shorter engagements. For example, liquid talent might create competitive or strategic analyses, conduct market research or build financial models. On-demand talent supports all levels of businesses, also serving as consultants and advisors for corporate boards.

The key to engaging liquid talent for high business impact is to focus on answering very specific questions or addressing particular challenges.

Transitioning To Modern Strategy

Competing successfully in an increasingly complex environment requires businesses to be nimble, agile and opportunistic. Building an agile, flexible workforce and shifting to a project-based work mindset are critical. Without these fundamental building blocks of modern strategy, businesses are forever conceding the potential for first-mover advantage. Start taking advantage of the opportunities today and tomorrow by shifting to a modern business strategy approach.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Seven Steps To Building Your Global Liquid Workforce

By Yolanda Lau

Companies are increasingly turning to the liquid workforce as part of their overall talent strategy. This talent is not only supporting short-term needs but also providing strategic support with knowledge workers serving as on-demand advisers to executive teams and corporate boards. But how do you develop a robust and reliable freelance talent pool that can become a strategic asset to help your company quickly pivot and scale where needed?

1. Start by identifying your talent needs.

Always start with your strategic priorities. Consider each and ask whether the priority could be accelerated by engaging the liquid workforce. Do you have talent gaps? Could a blended workforce fill these gaps? What are your near term needs and how could on-demand workers help?

The answers to these questions will help you identify where best to engage the liquid workforce and what skill sets and experiences you will need to look for when considering 1099 workers.

2. Source your global liquid talent.

There are many ways you can find liquid talent, including through one of the many freelance workforce marketplaces that provide access to workers around the globe. In my experience, the best freelancers and consultants that I’ve worked with have come through referrals. Ask your network for referrals, making sure to share details about the kind of skills and experiences you need. Your existing global workforce is also a great source for referrals to freelancers.

3. Build an onboarding process with ease and efficiency in mind.

First impressions have a big impact. Creating a standard onboarding experience for all your liquid talent not only helps your company save time (and reduce potential compliance risks) but also improves the experience for freelancers. The initial onboarding experience says a lot about what your company is like to work with. For example, you can make onboarding easy and efficient with automation. Using an electronic, automated process can significantly streamline the process for you and the freelancer, saving both of you time and effort. Ensure that liquid workers feel welcome throughout the process, not like they are jumping through a series of hoops to begin work.

4. Establish best practices for your hiring managers.

Working with the global, liquid workforce is a new form of people management, and your hiring managers need training to successfully manage freelance and on-demand talent. Their goal should be to build a relationship with the freelancer, not just oversee the churning out of a project. Sharing best practices for managing freelancers will increase the likelihood that this talent will want to work with your company in the future.

5. Build an internal talent database.

Managing liquid talent is similar in some ways to managing employee talent. Develop an internal talent database where you capture all the information related to your workers. What are their skills and experiences? How are their communication skills? What areas or functions are they best suited to support? What projects have they worked on? How were those projects rated? Capturing and tracking this information makes it easy to identify the right talent within your talent database for any given project.

6. Create a positive work environment.

Like your W-2 workforce, the global, liquid workforce also wants to work in a positive environment where their work is valued. Don’t forget this is a mutual selection process — the talent also needs to choose to work with you — both initially and for any future projects. Lead with mindfulness, be aware of time zones and cultural differences and get to know your on-demand workers as people. In my experience, I’ve found that this helps freelancers feel less like task robots and more like valued team members.

Consultants and freelancers seek opportunities to learn and continue to build skills in an environment with reasonable processes and procedures. To retain talent for future engagements, make sure to always compensate fairly and make payments on time.

7. Structure a performance management system.

Providing feedback to your liquid workers throughout and at the end of a project is essential to building a successful and ongoing partnership. Gather performance feedback from anyone who worked with an individual freelancer. Incorporate these responses and share them as a performance review with the freelancer. Keep track of the performance reviews in your database and include notes on working style or other factors that will help for partnering on future projects.

The future of work is here (it’s more than just remote work) and it’s time to strategically engage the liquid workforce as part of your company’s talent strategy. These tips can help you continue to grow and build it into a strategic asset for your company.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

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Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.