How To Embrace Contract Talent

November 23, 2018

Thanks to developments in technology, multi-office teams — and even fully remote teams — are now more common than ever across many different industries. However, managing and communicating with geographically dispersed individuals every day presents a unique set of challenges. One of those obstacles is creating a cohesive, unified company culture, lived and felt by all workers regardless of location.Our experts at Premier Talent Partners offer advice on building and maintaining a positive company culture among staffing consultants and contractors. Follow our tips for success.1. Create A Culture Of Trust One of the reasons our company is able to staff an entire department is because we focus on trust. Trust is created when people make themselves vulnerable. Encourage your team to ask questions, make mistakes, and learn from each other and long-term connections will be created organically. 2. Bring Everyone Together At Least Once A Year It's important to periodically get people together for an extended time. Shared experience is what creates relationships, which creates trust, which enables your culture. We bring everyone together once a year for a long weekend. We assess each person to determine what they need to be motivated and how they contribute to our culture. Then we do our best to meet those needs. 3. Don't Only Talk To Them When You Need Something When you only interact with a contract coworker when you need them to get work done, it becomes harder to get past inevitable differences of opinion because you're missing the informal social interactions that help you empathize with someone and see them as a complete human being. Deliberately set aside time for fun, informal interactions, both in person as well as in chat rooms and email lists. 4. Pair Full-Time Employees With Contractors Maintaining company culture is very important for the success of a company. To make sure your non-salaried workers share your company culture, you can pair each of them with a full-time employee. They should have regular meetings that include non-work elements. Every now and then you should invite all workers so they can experience the company culture firsthand. 5. Plan Your Culture Around Being Staffing-Friendly Plan your culture around those people you don't see every day in person rather than an office culture. This means everything you do focuses on how to include them and respect their contributions rather than fitting them into the rest of the company.6. Encourage Constant (And Good!) Communication Spend time investing in a proper Slack and video conferencing setup. A lot of people "use Slack" without understanding how configurable it is. It's important to create and foster conversations within Slack, so utilize plugins and one-off rooms to develop welcoming environments. Configure and use the phone icon to have a one-click way to start impromptu conference calls. 7. 'Meet' Often Use tech to virtually meet on a regular basis and encourage communication through this medium. Using video conferencing is an alternative to bring in off-campus employees who build trust and streamline communication. Encourage team members to use the camera and be part of the conference "in person." Communication and trust are key for high-performing teams, so use technology to bring contract and salaried employees together. 8. Always Hire For Value Alignment, Regardless Of Their Location A culture isn't created by talking about it — it comes from each person who's aligned with the company’s character. That is why we put a lot of emphasis on culture fit at every stage of the employee journey — from hiring to exit discussions. It is important that potential employees share our core value: Don’t spoil someone else’s day. We believe that it takes great people to deliver a great product. 9. Celebrate Wins Together Always celebrate your accomplishments as a team and recognize that everyone is an important part of the team, whether they're at the office or working remotely. Establish a strong sense of inclusion among the team. Make an effort to host events and encourage as much face-to-face interaction as possible. If you can't do this, celebrate your team's' accomplishments on your company communications channel. 10. Hold Fun Events For Contract Workers Because we acquire talent all over the world, we treat team members equally in terms of responsibilities, expectations and perks. We try to hold fun events for the contract team members. We also utilize online technologies to bring us closer. Whatever the case may be, you have to be creative. The problem with hiring top talent is retention.

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