Embrace the future of work
On-site workshops
The freelance economy is booming and everyone is trying to have a piece of it !
In a context of war for talent, companies need to adapt if they want to find – and retain – the best freelance team.
Hiring freelancers requires specific skills…
Working with independent service providers is a no-brainer : access to top talents on-demand, optimization of payroll and low overheads are only a few benefits.
The freelance economy holds the promise of more flexibility, profitability and agility in the workplace. In exchange, it comes with its very own challenges.
Yet, organizations still use traditional human ressources systems to build their ecosystem of contractors. This is a recipe for disaster : administrative and compliance issues, heavy turnover, unavailability of talents, low quality of services…
How can we bridge this gap and only get the best of the freelance economy ?
Introducing the Chief Freelance Officer role !
Sometimes called « Head of Community » or « Vendor Relationship Manager », this new kind of CFO is in charge of the dynamics between their company and independent contractors.
Their role consists of finding, on-boarding, managing and nurturing a community of top freelance talents.
With a Chief Freelance Officer on board, you’ll sail smoothly through the gig economy !
1. Hiring a dream team
It is not possible to (smoothly) build a freelance ecosystem by applying the same strategies than when hiring full time employees.
The key to successfully source freelance profiles resides in gaining visibility in front of the right talents, identifying their potential (« can they do it ? ») and verifying alignment (« will they do it ? »).
This first step ensures that the gigs are satisfying – not only on the clients side (quality work) but also for the freelancers.
2. Welcoming new talents
Once the ideal freelance candidates have been identified, it’s time to on-board them.
This process requires a selection phase (tests) to ensure that the partnership will be successful, followed by offering trainings on the ins and outs of the gigs and of your business.
This integration process will give freelancers all the information they need to succeed in their missions, in an autonomous way.
3. Coordinating gigs in progress
Managing independent contractors brings challenges, especially in a remote work environment and in the field of services.
A streamlined service delivery will help your team meet deadlines and expectations.
This is why the Chief Freelance Officer must appoint dedicated support contacts, set a workflow to monitor progress and add control quality practices.
4. Taking care of your community
Going silent in between gigs is never a good idea. To remain a priority in the busy schedule of contractors, organizations must nurture them !
How ? By supporting them with satisfying working conditions and a dedicated ressource center to advance their skills.
In a nutshell, investing in the success and growth of freelancers is key to becoming their new favorite client !
Learn from a seasoned Chief Freelance Officer
Hello, I’m Lise Slimane. 5 years ago, I accidentally became a Chief Freelance Officer.
When I co-founded Captiz – a translation marketplace – I quickly had to learn how to find hundreds of freelancers to keep up with our demand.
At the time, I couldn’t find any training on the matter. I had to learn by doing – making all the mistakes in the book – until I found the perfect recipe to build a freelance ecosystem.
After my startup got acquired, I naturally became a freelance economy advocate, helping individuals and companies thrive through the future of work.
La Minute Freelance was born !
For the past 2 years, I’ve helped clients find, onboard, manage and nurture their communities of freelancers. I’ve done this as a product owner, educator and chief freelance officer !
Today, I proudly packaged this unique expertise into a comprehensive workshop : « Becoming a Chief Freelance Officer« .
This on-site training is designed to take your team from overwhelm to a structured approach on how to collaborate with freelancers.
Let’s work together to create opportunities that your dream freelancers/vendors won’t resist !
Freelance Economy Trainings for your teams
Would you like to appoint one or several Chief Freelance Officer(s) in-house? Are you looking to train new recruits on the ins-and-outs of the gig economy? Is your team building services or digital products for an audience of freelancers?
Let me support you with on-site workshops and year-round consulting services.
Together, we’ll work on reaching your goals and solving your pain points. My trainings rely on my homemade framework (Find, Onboard, Manage, Nurture) and on 1:1 support, tailored to your teams unique challenges.
2-day workshop
Trainings on how to become a Chief Freelance Officer followed by implementation exercices- 12 hours of on-site training
- 4-6 team members
- Personalized Exercises
- Templates to use year-round
One-week facilitation
On-site workshop with your team to solve a major pain point related to the freelance economy- 5-day workshop on-site
- One-day Seminar
- Tailored program
- Follow-up calls (3×90′)
12-month intensives
One-year support for your team members as they scale globally in the freelance economy.- One-week facilitation each quarter
- Support to one key team member :
- 1:1 Monthly calls (12×90′)
- 1:1 Unlimited Voice Support (WhatsApp)
A 20% VAT (Value Added Tax) might apply depending on your company’s location. Travel fees may apply for on-site training outside of existing itinerary.
2019 Availability
As a freelance economy specialist, I decided to walk the walk and remain a one-person business.
Through my digital nomad lifestyle, I travel to clients worldwide on specific dates. Take a look at my itinerary to see if our path will cross, and make sure to rapidly snap my workshops while I’m around. Spots are limited and I get booked quickly.
July – September : Asia (Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Bali)
September – October : Europe (London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam)
November : USA (Miami, NYC, LA, San Francisco)
Let’s jump on a 30′ discovery call to see how I can support your team.
Can’t find your city? I’ll travel to your teams (extra fees apply).
Happy clients
Read how past clients have removed the overwhelm and structured their approach to get the best out of the freelance economy
I wanted to gain a better understanding of the Chief Freelance Officer Role.
The training fulfilled my expectations. I learned a lot and confirmed some of my intuitions. The pedagogy was excellent : very clear with practical example and relevant tools.
How will I use my new CFO skillset ? By offering services on the topic to my consulting clients who wish to hire freelancers.
I wanted to verify my intuition: am I capable of becoming a CFO? The answer is yes!
Lise offers a very efficient pedagogy: her presentation was always clear, precise and detailed. The exercises and case studies that we reviewed through the course were relevant.
I’m now equipped to answer my clients’ requirement when it comes to managing better their external resources. I’m adding a new skillset on top of marketing and communication thanks to La Minute Freelance.
A program we’ll co-create together !
Whether you’ve got one foot in the freelance economy or you are all in, your organization will benefit in preparing to the future of work !
Workshops available in English 🇬🇧 and in French 🇫🇷
Comprehensive Framework
All of my programs are built around my home-made framework to find, onboard, manage and nurture an ecosystem of freelancers.
Within each one of these modules, we’ll explore key concepts, implementation strategies and case studies.
Being a Chief Freelance Officer requires a broad skillset. Therefore, the trainings include a mix of recruiting technics, digital marketing, product management and service design.
Exercices & ToolBox
I believe in the power of learning by doing. It’s easier to focus, and it’s also a great way to let knowledge sink in ! All of my programs come with digital workbooks that will be used together as exercices.
Once I’m gone, your team will gain full autonomy and will be able to use these sheets to structure your very own ecosystem of freelancers.
They’ll also receive access to a digital toolbox where they’ll find templates that can be used to save precious time while collaborating with freelancers.
Content tailored to your needs
Sure, the freelance economy relies on core principles that I will indeed teach you. But your business is unique. And so should be your approach to working with external vendors.
Whether you’ll opt for 2 days, 1 week or an entire year of working together, my programs will always include your specific goals and include personalized exercices. There will also be plenty of time for questions.
I’ll be both a consultant and a change facilitator, bringing in 5 years of experience within my own businesses and with diverse clients (publicly traded companies, startups, founders…). We’ll come up with action plans to solve your most burning pain points.
Frequently Asked Questions
Browse this FAQ to explore more of what it’s like to work together !
Who is this program for?
Every organization could benefit from learning how to (better) collaborate with freelancers. After all, it is the future of work!
This training is warmly recommended to the following startups and established companies :
- Marketplaces and Gig Economy platforms (Uber-like services) who rely on a network of vendors and freelancers to deliver value to their end-clients,
- HR and purchasing departments looking to hire talents on-demand to keep overheads low,
- Agencies who outsource gigs to freelancers on a regular basis (translation, web, design, PR…),
- Digital project managers who struggle to find the right tech talents due to the lack of available candidates,
- Startups who are selling services and products to an audience of freelancers and who need to understand them to serve them better, and to sell more,
- Consulting firms who would like to advise their clients on the freelance economy,
- Recruitment specialists looking to expand into the sourcing of freelance talents,
- Collaborative and shared-economy startups working with individuals (crowdsourcing) willing to rent/share their belongings or their time.
Is this training focused on Human Ressources ?
Human ressources (HR) strategies are completely different between hiring full-time employees and freelancers.
Applying traditional HR technics to collaborate with contractors is a recipe for disaster.
The main reason is that full-time employees are meant to stay for a while and evolve naturally in the business. Therefore, you’ll invest in them – long term. There is time to accommodate their learning curve. What matters is their potential, their alignment with the company culture and their attachment to your mission.
While all of this apply for freelancers too, it is merely not enough. Freelancers are hired short term to get a job done – and missions are usually budgeted on time-spent.
It would be unfair to expect freelancers to bring the same level of investment for a short mission as if they were on-boarded in a new job. Likewise, your team won’t likely have the time nor the patience to repeat, over and over, the same information to all new contractors.
Therefore, being a Chief Freelance Officer is not a HR job. It’s a hybrid role. It also requires product strategy, project management, community building and digital marketing skills.
In the end, working with freelancers is always people management. It’s beautiful and hard at the same time. For freelancers, it can only work with strong processes and systems in place.
When is the best time to organize a workshop ?
Workshops can be used :
- to shift your company culture and transform existing systems, thus getting ready for the future of work,
- to onboard your new employees who have no experience in the freelance economy,
- to build a new product designed for freelancers,
- to gain new market shares,
- to fix a problem.
– TO SHIFT YOUR COMPANY CULTURE
Embracing the freelance economy is a necessity. A lot of talents now want to be independent. Furthermore, hiring on-demand is a great way to keep overheads low.
A workshop will help your existing team get ready, especially HR professionals, purchasing departments and project managers.
– TO ONBOARD NEW EMPLOYEES
It’s always best to run a workshop as early as possible, so that your team members spend more time implementing good practices and less time fixing bad choices in the future.
Therefore, I recommend running a workshop regularly with all of your new hires. This is ideal if your employees are experts at what they do, but new to the freelance economy.
– TO BUILD A PRODUCT FOR FREELANCE USERS
Are you designing a software, an app or a course that an audience of freelancers will use ?
If so, your entire product team would benefit from this workshop. Your product managers, lead developers, scrum masters and UX/UI designers need a deep understanding of the specificities of this economy, so that they can build a product supporting freelancers in its DNA.
A few example include compliance issues (legal, fiscal and financial requirements for working with freelancers), payment to vendors, digital signature, availability assessment, organizing the freelance database (tags, categories…), calculating pricing (CPQ) and designing digital workflows.
It’s always best to run a workshop before the users journey, the backlog and/or the first sprint is prepared. If it’s too late, the second best time is before preparing the next release.
– TO GAIN MARKET SHARES
Are you selling to a freelance audience? If so, a Chief Freelance Officer would be the best addition to your business development efforts.
By understanding the daily struggles of independent workers, you’ll be able to write stories, create content, pitch services and hold space in a way that is relevant to them.
– TO FIX A PROBLEM
Finally, you might want to organize a workshop when there is a pattern of problems, occurring over and over, with your freelance ecosystem.
The most common problems include :
– heavy turn over : freelancers don’t wan’t to work with you in the long run.
– poor reviews online from freelancers : your reputation is suffering from your current practices.
– loss of quality over time : complains from clients or colleagues who receive less-than-perfect work from freelancers.
– trouble to reach network effects : you have more demand than you have freelancers available. You need a higher ratio of contractors available at all times.
– disintermediation : if you are an intermediary, your clients and the freelancers will work outside your platform – cutting your commission in the process.
Can we meet you before making our purchasing decision ?
I always love to meet fellow freelance economy enthusiasts for coffee. However, it is most likely that we will be in different cities, as I live a nomadic lifestyle traveling from one client to another.
If you’ve got your eyes set on a specific date and location in my itinerary, it is not a good idea to wait until I get there to meet and book a workshop – as I am oftentimes booked in advance.
What I can offer is a video-conference call where we can chat all-things freelancing and see if we’ll be a match to work together.
You can also shoot me as many e-mails as you’d like until I answer all of your burning questions ! Hello@laminutefreelance.fr
I view this remote process as a great practice to get you a foot in the freelance economy : after all, most contractors are remote these days 🙂
Do you offer done-for-you services ?
I’m always happy to jump on a call and discuss your needs.
On rare occasions, I do accept to provide 1:1 consulting services to conduct an audit, craft a strategic action plan and set up KPIs.
However, these services are add-ons to my core trainings. The reason why is that – to achieve full transformation – your organisation needs to be ready – and someone needs to keep on doing the work once I’m gone.
Please note that I do not provide operational, done-for-you services. The reason why is that these roles include a lot of in-house communication, and I believe that it’s hard to bring this value part time, at a distance, from an external viewpoint.
You’ll get better value by letting me support a key employee (or several) while they conduct these missions for you. Some of my packages include calls and unlimited voice support on WhatsApp so that I can provide constant guidance during implementation.
What is the process of working with you ?
First, we’ll jump on a 30 minute call to discuss get on a 30’ call where we discuss your goals, challenges and see if my programs are a fit this time around.
Once you decide on a program, location and date, I’ll send over a contract and payment link (30% of the total amount is required to secure your spot).
After the confirmation of your booking, we’ll be in touch until the due date to organize our time together. Therefore, it is recommended to appoint a key contact in your company so that communication is streamlined.
Book a discovery call
Let’s jump on a call, talk all-things freelance, and see if a collaboration together makes sense. No strings attached.