Stop Paying Employees to Slack Off

Employees steal an average of 1.7 hours per day from their employers.

Every company has one or two #slackers. You know, the ones who come in late, leave early, treat themselves to long lunch breaks, text, keep cell phone games running all day, text, go out for eight smokes a day, text, spend an unnatural amount of time in the bathroom, text, take a lot of sicks days, text -- you know the ones. Did you know these non-producing, time-wasting activities adds up to an average of over 1.7 hours per day per slacking employee?! Do the math. In a year, just a single employee can waste over $7,000 of his employer's dollars -- your dollars! But hey, you need #employees so what're ya gonna do? Well, there's actually a better way.

“Pay only for production. When freelancers take coffee breaks, lunch hours, “sick days”, THEY pay for the time, their employers (clients) don’t. Employers often receive better performance, too; good freelancers ensure future work by producing more…and better.”

That was a comment shared by a reader of Harvey Schachter's Globe & Mail article that discusses the shift away from conventional #employment and toward #hiring #freelancers. The reader presents the excellent point that employers need not pay for wasted time but rather only #productive time, which, seems like a no-brainer. But even though a lot of employers might wish they could replace their #slacking #employees with more productive workers, far too few know how to go about finding and #hiring a #freelancer.

But here's good news. Hiring a freelancer isn't much different from hiring an employee. You solicit #resumes and/or #proposals, engage in #interview sessions, check references, and ultimately #hire the freelancer that best meets your needs. Once hired, you pay the freelancer only for the #productivity you receive from him or her and, as the commentator pointed out above, you will likely "receive better performance, too; good freelancers ensure future work by producing more…and better.”

So how does one go about hiring a freelancer? Just as employers seeking new employees often use a recruiting agency to elicit only the cream of the crop, it can #work the same way for hiring a #freelancer. #Outsourcing the tasks of finding, vetting, interviewing, and negotiating with freelancers can be a huge time-saver and can ultimately net better #talent for less money.

Read the Globe and Mail article -- it is fantastically informative and its readers' comments make for titillating discussion! Then check out this list of the top 11 places to find a freelancer. There is no shortage of places to find a freelancer, but it can be a time-consuming search. You might want to consider paying someone to to do the leg work for you.