Key Takeaways:

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•  Bolster your tech stack with these popular collaboration tools that can help you manage your work relationships with freelancers.
  
  
• Learn how to create better accountability through PC monitor software.
  
  
• Learn which apps help you do everything more efficiently from freelancer communication to file sharing.

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Read time: 6 minutes

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Over the last few years, remote work has made it easier for companies to hire freelancers from anywhere in the world. 

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Tapping into the freelance pool gives companies access to a vast group of talent. It also provides freelancers with a chance to work for many companies that may not be accessible to them in their local market.

Managing freelancers can be tough, especially when those freelancers are miles away from you, and working remotely. Most of the time, they will not be familiar with your brand and how your company operates.

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To successfully collaborate with freelancers, you need to ensure they are as effective and productive as possible. 

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Finding ways to monitor productivity is critically important, and you can use workforce tracking tools and so-called “computer spy software” for valuable insights into performance (without being intrusive!).

Let's take a look at some of the tools, such as remote worker monitoring, that can help in managing remote freelancers.

Trello: Project Management

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Bottom Line: With a straightforward board-card system, Trello offers a visual and interactive way to manage all your remote team projects. The software’s flexibility supports various project types, and encourages seamless collaboration.

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Trello is a free organizational and project management system. It can help you, your team, and your freelancers stay organized using a system of cards and boards. It can help you track the progress of each task from start to finish. 

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You can use Trello to keep track of long-term projects, as well as daily tasks. Each of your freelancers can be added to a specific board depending on the need of the project.

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Slack: Team Communication

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Bottom Line: Slack uses chat channels which means you can organize your remote team’s conversations according to context. Set up one-on-one or group discussions and use integrations to centralize key communication.

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When working with remote freelancers, how you communicate should be a top priority. Usually, when everyone is sitting next to each other, it is a lot easier to get your point across. But when you are working with remote freelancers, all your communication will happen in the digital space. And for that, you need an all-in-one solution like Slack.

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Slack is a team communication app. It can be accessed on all major platforms, allowing you to create topic-specific chat rooms. Slack can be used both for private and company-wide communication, making it an excellent choice for communicating with freelancers as well.

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LastPass: Password Management

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Bottom Line: LastPass offers you a secure way to give freelancers access to the tools you use to complete important tasks. You can use it to store various passwords without compromising your security.

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Many freelance jobs these days require access to a password-protected platform. Just simply giving out your password in an email or via Slack is not secure. A better solution is to use a password manager like LastPass to both keep and share your passwords easily and securely.

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Insightful: Employee Monitoring

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Bottom Line: Insightful gives you a secure way to monitor your remote employees’ activity with a real-time dashboard. You can analyze data to identify performance trends and use the data to make positive changes.

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You might be asking yourself how to monitor work from home to ensure that your freelancers are doing the work you are paying them to do. 

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With remote worker monitoring solution Insightful, our employee monitoring software, keeping track of what your freelancers are doing is quick and straightforward. Our employee tracker can provide you with proof of what is going on on the screen of your employees using periodic, rule-based, or one-click screenshots. 

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Insightful also makes it easy to monitor your employees working in different timezones, making it an excellent tool for managing remote freelancers.

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By knowing how to monitor work from home accurately with Insightful, the relationships you have with your freelancers will be full of mutual trust and stress-free.

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Dropbox: File Storage & Sharing

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Bottom Line: Dropbox allows you to store a large amount of digital files and assets, so your team members can easily access them. 

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Dropbox is a cloud-based storage software. You can use it to share files with your friends, business partners, or clients. The best way to utilize Dropbox with your remote freelancers is to use it as the one where you and your freelancers can share files with each other.

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G-Suite: Document Management 

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Bottom Line: G-Suite allows you to organize all relevant information for your remote teams and encourage real-time collaboration.

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G-Suite is well-known to all information workers. An integrated suite of apps, G-Suite has everything you need to support effective document management for remote teams.

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With everything from spreadsheets (Sheets) to documents (Google Docs), your team members can effectively collaborate on projects and provide real-time feedback where necessary. Plus, your teams will also have access to Google Calendar, which they can use to map out future tasks and projects and coordinate to reach milestones and hit goals.

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Calendly: Scheduling Meetings

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Bottom Line: Calendly facilitates simple scheduling across time zones and eliminates the constant back-and-forth communication. Featuring calendar integration to display availability, meetings are easy to coordinate across remote teams.

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If you do not like wasting time when finding the right times to meet with freelancers, you need a tool like Calendly. Calendly helps you easily schedule meetings by allowing you to send a unique scheduling link to your freelancers. 

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They can then see when you are available, and, right from there, book a meeting with you. It automatically handles multiple time zones, making it great for working with freelancers from other parts of the world.

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Additionally, you can link it to your calendar and Zoom (or other tool for meetings), to streamline the process and automatize scheduling completely.

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Bonsai: Contract & Invoice Management 

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Bottom Line: Bonsai makes all the administrative work associated with working with freelancers straightforward, from signing contracts to approving invoices.

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Bonsai is a software solution that allows you to create, review, and e-sign contracts and invoices quickly. 

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They provide you many templates that you only need to fill out, making the process of signing contracts a lot less confusing.

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If you don’t currently have a system or process for onboarding and working with freelancers, Bonsai is an excellent solution.

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Asana: Task Management

Bottom Line: Asana helps bring efficiency to your task management process and allows everyone to stay aligned with your strategic goals

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While we’ve already covered project management with Trello, Asana offers a different approach to managing tasks with a freelancer.

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With Asana, you can break your projects down into tasks and subtasks making it easy to track progress and predict future timelines.

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You can also implement collaborative workflows which means freelancers and in-house teams can work together seamlessly and align with overarching strategic company goals.

Zoom: Video Conferencing

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Bottom Line: Zoom is essential if you plan on hosting face-to-face meetings with your freelancers to relay relevant project information

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A tool that became so popular in the past few years that it became a verb, it’d be remiss of us not to mention Zoom in this list of collaborative tools.

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Zoom allows you to host video conferences with hundreds of participants, making face-to-face communication as easy as sending emails. It’s a great way to clear things up quickly with your freelancers and outline project scope from day one.

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You can also share your screen and give presentations if necessary to familiarize new team members with your SOPs and project expectations.

Figma: Design Collaboration

Bottom Line: Figma allows you to work together in real time on design projects with efficient workflows and various creative tools

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Figma is a design collaboration tool that allows you to come together with external collaborations on your design projects.

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With Figma, you can collaborate on designs in real time and work towards your desired end result through iteration and back-and-forth communication. Get your team together in one virtual space so you can ensure strategic alignment and bring your creative vision to life.

GitHub: Software Development Tracking

Bottom Line: GitHub allows you to share your code with freelancers so they can make changes, add input, and evaluate results

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If you’re in the business of developing software, GitHub is a must-have solution for working with freelancers.

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GitHub allows you to manage your code and invite external collaborators to make changes, manage different versions, and evaluate iterations.

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You can also use GitHub for issue tracking so you can proactively identify and eliminate any issues or bugs that might prevent you from making meaningful progress.

Airtable: Database Organization

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Bottom Line: Use Airtable to organize and share your data to enable simple access for external collaborators

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Airtable is a versatile project and database organization tool that combines spreadsheet and database elements allowing for easy data management and sharing.

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With many different customizable views from grid to Kanban, you can set your data up in a way that makes sense for both you and your freelancers.

Collaborating with Freelancers

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Working with remote freelancers can be a great way to grow your business. But like everything else in business, it can be challenging, especially in management.

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But, by taking advantage of the software listed in this post, you are likely to have a much more positive experience in working with remote freelancers, making it faster and easier to achieve your goals.

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Updated on January 11th, 2024