Freelancers are great assets to businesses.
They are independent contractors who are able to help with specific projects and tasks without being a full-time employee and requiring a full-time salary and benefits.
Working with freelancers brings about many benefits that more and more companies are taking advantage of.
However, working with freelancers isn’t always smooth sailing. There do come times when you need to know how to give feedback to your freelancers.
Because you aren’t their direct manager, it can be difficult to know the best ways to go about giving freelancers feedback. It is essential that you do this in order to maintain a strong working relationship.
In this article, we’ll help you understand why giving feedback is important and walk you through the specific steps you should keep in mind in order to give feedback to your freelancers constructively.
The Benefits of Constructive Feedback
Giving feedback refers to the process of providing suggestions, observations, and corrections for improvement.
When you deliver these notes to a freelancer, you can help them understand your vision more accurately and help guide them towards the end result that you are looking for.
Giving feedback isn’t about being harsh or hurting someone’s feelings. Some people struggle to give feedback because they are concerned that they will come off as abrasive or rude.
But without feedback, you will constantly be frustrated with your freelancers and they will be frustrated with you, as they won’t know what they are doing that isn’t working for you.
There are some other important benefits to giving feedback, including:
- Increasing the quality of the work you receive.
- Saving time and money.
- Improving communication and relationships between clients and freelancers.
- Building trust between clients and freelancers.
- Reducing stress and uncertainty on both ends.
- Providing specific directives and directions.
- Enhancing positive change.
- Showing appreciation for work done so far.
How to Give Feedback to Freelancers
Knowing how to give feedback to a freelancer might seem difficult on the surface. After all, they aren’t your direct employees, so usual methods of feedback might not work.
However, once you dive down into the details, you’ll understand that giving feedback is all about respect and a constructive approach.
Here are some helpful tips on how to give feedback to freelancers.
1. Understand When to Give Feedback
Knowing when to give feedback is important, as timing is always critical.
When you give feedback too frequently, it comes across as aggressive and berating. And if you don’t give feedback enough, a freelancer might not understand how important following that feedback is.
Giving feedback when you notice an issue or setting up regular touch base meetings where you can bring up your notes with a freelancer is a great way to build a pattern of feedback.
2. Meet Your Freelancer Privately
You never want to give feedback in a public setting.
For example, if a freelancer is presenting a project to a large group, then giving feedback at that moment isn’t going to be a great idea. It can come across as shaming the person or not appreciating the work they have done.
If you have notes, set a private call or meeting with the freelancer so you can discuss your feedback one on one.
3. Be as Specific as Possible
Giving a general note isn’t a helpful form of feedback.
When your feedback is too broad, the freelancer you are working with might not know exactly what they should do with that note, meaning that the issue might persist.
When you are specific about your feedback and give exact directives, you can avoid confusion and help constructively guide your freelancers toward where you want them to be.
It also helps you focus more on noticing specifics in the work your freelancers provide rather than general notes.
4. Provide Examples and Solutions
It’s also a great idea to provide examples or show solutions to your freelancers during a feedback meeting.
When you provide specific examples of what you are talking about and then use that same example to showcase what you want the solution to be, you are giving a specific use case to your freelancer.
That allows them to fully understand what it is you are trying to say without them having to guess what you mean.
5. Be Empathetic
Giving feedback can be a sensitive process, particularly if you have large notes to give or serious issues to address.
When approaching these sensitive topics and speaking to your freelancers about issues, you need to be empathetic to their points of view.
A freelancer puts in a lot of their time and effort to provide you with solutions, so you need to be kind and sympathetic when you address your concerns.
This can help your freelancers accept your feedback with an open mind rather than feeling defensive.
6. Concentrate on Facts
You don’t want emotions to run wild during a feedback session.
While you want to make sure you are facilitating open dialogue with your freelancers, you don’t want the meeting to get away from you with hurt feelings and generalizations.
Focus on your facts and specific examples that you can provide. If you have any hard data, bring that to help showcase what you are talking about and to back up your feedback with facts.
7. Call Out Recurring Mistakes Immediately
While having regular sessions to discuss bigger issues might be a great way to set a regular cadence, you never want a recurring mistake to keep happening.
Once you notice that a mistake is being made over and over again, you can immediately step in to make the freelancer aware of it.
This helps you stop the freelancer from having to redo their work constantly and can nip a potential issue right in the bud.
8. Give Edits in Your Revisions
Revisions are a normal part of a freelancer and client relationship.
When you request revisions, you are asking the freelancer to fix certain parts of their work or finalize any mistakes.
These revision requests are a great area to give feedback in the form of edits.
Rather than just asking a freelancer to fix a mistake, explain why it was an error and give details so the mistake can be avoided in the future.
9. Avoid Micromanaging
There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to deal with a micromanager.
You need to have enough trust in your freelancers to allow them to do their work with minimal input. Feedback shouldn’t be constant corrections, as that is frustrating and unhelpful.
By having regular feedback sessions, you can avoid constant corrections and have a better working relationship with your freelancers.
10. Know When to Part Ways
The sad truth is that not every working relationship is meant to last.
Even when you give helpful feedback, sometimes a freelancer still struggles to take it into consideration or new issues consistently pop up.
You shouldn’t be afraid to admit when a relationship isn’t working out the way you planned, and even when feedback isn’t fixing issues, then it might be time to part ways with the freelancer.
That allows you to search for a new person to complete projects who fits better with your company’s needs.
When to Give Feedback to A Freelancer
Giving feedback doesn’t have to be a formal, long-winded affair.
You can constantly give feedback during your check-ins with freelancers or when projects and tasks are due.
In truth, the frequency of feedback isn’t as important as understanding the best way to phrase your feedback and approach your notes to freelancers.
If your feedback comes across as nitpicking and constant beratement, it can be incredibly frustrating and draining for your freelancers.
When you approach your feedback using the notes above, you can add in compliments and admiration for what they have done correctly, along with helpful notes for future work.
When you can build this strong relationship and direct communication with your freelancers, you can create a healthy working relationship that lasts.
That means you can keep the same freelancer or group of freelancers for a long time, which helps create more patterns of consistency and less feedback that needs to be given overall.
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Wrap Up
Working with freelancers is a great way to outsource projects without needing to keep everything in-house. But when it comes time to give feedback, it can be confusing since a freelancer doesn’t fall under your direct supervision.
When you know how to give feedback in a constructive manner, both you and your freelancers will benefit from that honesty.
Many companies are taking advantage of the benefits that freelancers can bring to their bottom line and their workflow.
However, even with that knowledge, some businesses aren’t sure where to start. If you want to learn more about working with freelancers, check out our blog on how to find freelancers!
There you’ll learn how you can begin searching for a freelancer that fits your needs.
