Can I enforce a minimum contract period?

[6a7b6577]

I have a job that I'd like to hire a candidate for for a minimum of six months. Within that time, the job involves an unknown amount of hours; I will need their help on an ongoing basis with hours that fluctuate week by week. Can I/How can I enforce that a candidate is committted to the job for a six-month period?

Edit: It's more about making sure THEY do not end our contract before six months (unless something is terribly wrong); less about me being able to end it early due to poor work, etc. My boss (for whom I'm posting the job) just doesn't think we can enforce a six-month agreement.

A while back, this happened to us with another freelancer; they left a month into our work together and we were left in a bind. We just can't have that happen again.

[2a05aa63]

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Julie L wrote:

I have a job that I'd like to hire a candidate for for a minimum of six months. Within that time, the job involves an unknown amount of hours; I will need their help on an ongoing basis with hours that fluctuate week by week. Can I/How can I enforce that a candidate is committted to the job for a six-month period?

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You can fire them if the don't keep up.

[prestonhunter]

Julie:

I can assure you that you can end a contract at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all.

Likewise, freelancers can end a contract at any time.

You can enforce pretty much any requirement that you want.

If a freelancer is not working enough hours or doing enough work, or not wearing the correct color of hat during Zoom meetings, you can end the contract. That is your enforcement mechanism.

Successful project owners plan for personnel turnover. Successful project owners understand thst every day, at any time, a freelancer might quit, die, become gravely ill, adopt puppies, or otherwise become unavailable. So all systems and files are secured and archived centrally, and all critical tasks have cross-training, so that more than one person may perform the needed duties of the project. We don't rely on a single individual for the success of the project.

[prestonhunter]

re: "A while back, this happened to us with another freelancer; they left a month into our work together and we were left in a bind. We just can't have that happen again."

Think of the project in this way:

There is the project owner (the "boss").

There is the project manager (on your project, that's you).

And there are various freelancers who are hired to work on the project.

Here's a project that I am involved with:

What happens if a freelancer leaves the project suddenly?

Will that put the project in a bind?

No.

Because the project manager has arranged things so that the project can move on despite the loss of any one freelancer.

Whose responsibility is this?

Is it Upwork's responsibility? No.

The project owner's? No.

The freelancer's? No.

This is the project manager's responsibility.

[petra_r · Accepted solution]

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Julie L wrote:

 It's more about making sure THEY do not end our contract before six months.

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There is no way of enforcing that. You can't even enforce that with an employment contract. Your best bet is to pay your freelancer well, treat them like a valuable team member and create an atmosphere where the freelancer wouldn't dream of wanting to leave.

[claudiacezy]

Even if paid top rates and treated well, for an individual it's tricky to get into a contract that may require 30, 2 hours or none per week. Maybe try some retainer, guaranteed hours per week with a catch, something like 10 hours per week, if the freelancer works 2 hours in a week, you pay the remaining 8 hours ONLY if the individual works/completes the 6 months, and only at the end of the term. If the individual quits after 2 months no retainer to be paid.

It may be worth to look into hiring an agency. I don't know how agencies work, you open a contract with the agency, your agreement is with the agency, they assign a freelancer/agency member and if something goes wrong they take the responsibility to assign someone else from the team to your contract, without closing the contract or interrupting the activity. https://support.upwork.com/hc/en-us/articles/360009524274-Agency-Proposals-and-Offers