Although companies and freelancers usually look at onboarding and offboarding separately, both processes are linked in practice and should therefore be understood as a pillar of successful collaboration between freelancers and companies today and in the future.
Open and transparent onboarding
Beforehand, companies and freelancers need to clarify several questions:
- What goal is the company pursuing, what goal is the freelancer pursuing, and how can both goals be brought into the collaboration?
- What is the mission?
It is clear that freelancers mostly work on projects that companies cannot handle on their own. They are therefore, at least for a while, an irreplaceable part of the team and should be seen as such. Important here is the balance between the possibilities of a freelancer at a company in order to avoid false self-employment.
Onboarding new freelancers can be time-consuming and costly, but it should be handled with great care. In the end, both sides benefit from the onboarding into the company and the project, because goals are achieved together as a team.
As a result, companies and their employees learn how to solve problems and projects themselves. Onboarding also has a major influence on freelancers’ willingness to perform and their motivation within the company. What matters is openness on both sides, taking time for the process and being aware of its importance.
It is helpful to send the freelancer the necessary documents before the first working day and to enable access to the company network from day one so that both sides can prepare equally for the collaboration.
In addition, a direct contact person can be useful to handle any concerns and connect the freelancer with the people in charge.
Onboarding can be summarized in a checklist with central points:
- Set up hardware and software
- Professional, cultural and social integration into the team
- Regular communication and openness to criticism
- Shared, goal-oriented learning
- Joint definition of meaningful documentation
The second building block: offboarding
The second building block of the process is offboarding. It is defined as the professionally organized departure of an employee or freelancer from a company. Offboarding can be viewed from several angles, for example the technical aspects such as deactivating access data, or from the perspective of contract termination.
But the cornerstone of this departure, especially in the IT sector, is knowledge transfer. If this is not practiced properly, freelancers take their skills and knowledge with them when they leave a company.
That is why it is important to start knowledge transfer during the project and conclude it with successful offboarding. The company must know exactly what the freelancer is working on, learn from them and communicate with them. As a result, companies are then able to solve current problems and prepare for future challenges.
A final exit interview is the basic building block of offboarding, in which both sides speak openly with one another and obtain feedback on their joint work. At the beginning, onboarding should define what the documentation of the freelancer’s work must look like so that after departure it is clear and understandable what was worked on, how and when.
This allows both sides to learn from their mistakes and eliminate weaknesses. Eliminating weaknesses in the affected departments is also a fixed part of the assignment, because companies have little benefit if new problems arise immediately after the contract ends and they cannot solve them on their own.
Besides the professional aspect, it is equally important to create a positive atmosphere for freelancers when they leave the company. First impressions matter, but so do last impressions. Both entrepreneurs and freelancers should therefore remain professional until the last working day and work together toward their goals so they can be achieved.
Offboarding can also be summarized into five key aspects:
- Communicate the end of the project early
- Ensure knowledge transfer
- Handover and explanation of project results and documentation
- Clarify contractual details
- Stay in contact with one another
Open doors
As a result of good onboarding, successful collaboration and final offboarding, further assignments can arise beyond the current project. Good collaboration and the achievement of goals should prompt freelancers and companies to invest in staying in touch so that the successful cooperation can be repeated for future projects and the reputation of the company and the freelancer is maintained. You always meet twice in life.
Especially today, it has become essential to lead employees properly, even remotely, and not lose sight of the goal during these turbulent times. “Remote leadership” is about how to lead companies, teams and colleagues digitally. Feel free to visit our blog article on this particularly important topic.
