3 Tips For Managing Relationships With Those You Outsource To

If you simply don’t have the capacity to get all of your work done yourself, outsourcing specific tasks for your small business can be a great alternative. However, just because you’re not having to do the actual work yourself doesn’t mean that maintaining a healthy work relationship with those you outsource to won’t be a big job in and of itself.

To help you with this aspect of your business, here are three tips for managing relationships with those you outsource to. 

Get Everything Off On The Right Foot

It’s much harder to reset standards and boundaries for work once a relationship has started than to just get everything off on the right foot from the beginning. So if you’re about to start outsourcing some work to someone new, make sure you take the time to outline everything upfront. 

From the outset, get everything that you’re expecting from this service provider put into writing so that they can refer back to it regularly if needed. Clearly explain things like what tasks you expect them to accomplish, any specific processes you require them to use, when work will be submitted, how communication is expected to go, and anything else that’s important to you as part of your business. This way, both sides will know what the goals are and how work will progress moving forward. 

Choose The Right Team Member To Manage This Relationship

If you’re running the whole rest of your business on your own, you’ll be the one who’s personally managing all of your relationships with anyone you’re outsourcing to. But if you have other members on your staff, you can delegate this management responsibility to them. However, you’ll want to make sure that you choose the right team member to take over this responsibility. 

If you have someone on your staff that doesn’t have any management experience, can’t keep track of their own work very well, or isn’t a good communicator, you might want to shy away from putting them in charge of managing your outsourcing relationships. 

Give Them The Tools They Need For Success

As was mentioned above, if there are certain processes that you’re expecting outsourced partners to use as part of the work they’re completing for you, it’s up to you to ensure that they have those tools and know how to use them. Especially if you’re wanting them to communicate and turn in their work via a specific project management system that you use for your organization, you’ll need to make sure they have access to this and know how to accomplish their specified tasks within this system. 

If you are outsourcing work and are worried about how to best manage these relationships, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you with this.