What on-site freelancers bring to the party

Olena Kachmar © 123RF.com

In the unlikely event that a freelancer does come to your party, he or she will appreciate some privacy to sit in the corner and listen to their own music on their own headphones. Oh, and be mindful that he or she will only stay if the per hour billing structure checks out, which is bad news for your party, but great news for your ad agency. Here’s why:

Performance

Pay close attention to a freelancer on-site and you’ll notice a specimen operating at the very peak of his or her powers, wholly detached from his or her environment in a display of focused disassociation often found in sociopathic serial killers.

Small talk decreases in size to be virtually non-existent, which leaves little room for office gossip and even less room to slander you, the boss. Shrouded in silence, the freelancer can complete a day’s work in the same time it takes to describe how you, the boss, have zero compassion, below-par dress sense and a laughable Instagram account.

Savings on coffee

High-grade coffee is the original “creative juice” and the modern-day ad agency not the place to find it. Freelancers know this and adjust their supply accordingly.

Any freelancer worth his salt fills his bloodstream with superior-quality caffeine before he sets foot out of the house. Roaming the office with pupils sufficiently dilated, the freelancer can go up to five hours without having to dig into the agency’s, admittedly, B-grade stash.

Including water, milk, sugar, electricity, dishwashing liquid and man hours wasted waiting for the kettle to boil, the potential savings for your agency could run into the tens of hundreds of rands.

Less talk of a raise

The day a freelancer walks into your office to demand a raise, chances are you have kept him or her on for too long which gave him or her the impression that he or she is now a full-time employee. Such behaviour by a freelancer is a gross violation of a number of sections of the freelancer’s code and brings into question the mental capacity of an individual clearly unable to process the information contained in a boiler plate service level agreement.

There’s no point engaging. Simply get HR on board and escort the freelancer out of the building.

More space on the team photo

Freelancers are not into team building, which is why they’re freelancing.

This “outsider” attitude might not appear beneficial on the surface, but look a little deeper and you’ll discover a worker irrationally invested in work because work is the only thing that stands between a freelancer and a life on the streets spellchecking the cardboard posters of his or her “new friends” freelancing at robots across the city.

Cut the freelancer some slack and allow him or her to finish the job while the rest of the office fool around. Freelancers might not be part of the family, but like well-paid mercenaries they’ll keep their heads down to deliver work of the highest standard to ensure they’re called back to freelance another (half) day.