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30ffea09
Community Member

Monitoring Freelancers

How do we ensure that the employee is doing the work effectivley? I would like to understand this more: 'Upwork also counts keystrokes and takes screenshots of their screen (six times per hour), so you can verify billable hours.'

6 REPLIES 6
prestonhunter
Community Member

View work diaries.

 

Also: review the work they submit.

 

Compare the work done by each freelancer on the team. Continue working only with the freelancers who provide the most value to your project. Close the contracts on the others.

To minimize cost, hire 8 freelancers.

 

Compare quality and rate and volume of work done by all 8.

 

Fire the bottom 6. Work only with the best for the long term. Save lots of $$$ that way.

Preston,

 

Hiring eight freelancers for one job may be a good choice for long-term projects involving a large number of work hours, but at the low end of projects that only require, say, 20 hours or fewer of freelancer work, it makes no sense.  

 

Even assuming the client can choose the "right" freelancer after all freelancers have done only two hours of paid work, the client will have to pay for 16 hours of work and then pay the winning freelancer for 18 more hours of work, for a total of 34 hours of work paid.

 

Every freelancer's experience on Upwork is unique, but I haven't ever talked to a prospective client I thought had a budget that covered paying for 70% more work than was actually required to complete their project.

Will I think your analysis here is excellent and helpful.

You're quite right about the effectiveness and logic of hiring multiple freelancers making more sense for larger projects with lots of hours.

 

As projects decrease in size and number of hours required, it makes sense sense to try to maximize worker efficiency in this way.

feed_my_eyes
Community Member


Abigail M wrote:

How do we ensure that the employee is doing the work effectivley? I would like to understand this more: 'Upwork also counts keystrokes and takes screenshots of their screen (six times per hour), so you can verify billable hours.'


If you hire freelancer for an hourly contract, we have a "time tracker" that we need to log into and keep running while we're working. It does indeed measure keystrokes and takes screen captures at random intervals, basically to serve as proof that the freelancer is actually working on your project as opposed to, say, surfing the Internet or playing video games. However, it's difficult to ascertain the quality of the work until they actually submit it to you, so I would recommend asking the freelancer to spend, say, 3-4 hours on the project and then ask to see what they've done (although you don't say what type of project this is, so it's hard to say whether 3 hours is enough time to do anything substantial). 

florydev
Community Member


Abigail M wrote:

How do we ensure that the employee is doing the work effectivley? I would like to understand this more: 'Upwork also counts keystrokes and takes screenshots of their screen (six times per hour), so you can verify billable hours.'


Also of note this is only if you have an hourly project.   If you create a by-project job you will not see this.  

 

The primary way, I believe, you ensure someone is going to work effectively is interview them, find out what their experiences are, and how they plan to do your work and communicate to you.  If your project will take more than a day then I agree with Christine, get a work sample at some point, and ask them how it is going.

 

You can also choose to hire only a freelancer with lots of experience on Upwork with really positive reviews.  But, I would encourage you though to review what they say in the proposals and use that also as a guide.  All of us started with 0 experience on Upwork and someone gave us that first chance.  It could be the best freelancer for you has just started on Upwork.  Not every client is good for me just as not every freelancer will be good for you, even if they were for someone else.

 

All and all, this is no different than hiring an employee in the real world, give them only as much trust as they have earned.

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