Hire a freelancer: they face far less obstacles to being productive

If ever there was an advert for using freelancers to support your corporate learning, then the State of Enterprise report is it.

The research, carried out by Workfront, asked 600 workers about how they manage work. It will come as no surprise that activities that block productivity take up more time than those that enable it.

Survey respondents were asked to give a best guess estimate for what percentage of the working week is taken up by the following tasks:

• Performing the primary duties of my job – 39% (down from 46% the previous year)
• Emails – 16%
• Useful and productive meetings – 11%
• Administrative tasks – 11%
• Wasteful meetings – 10%
• Interruptions for non-essential tasks – 8%
• Everything else – 5%

As you can see from the list, 45% of the working week is taken up managing email, administrative tasks, wasteful meetings and interruptions for non-essential tasks.

If you are in full-time employment, these productivity blockers will be all too familiar. And as we become more connected so employees will spend more time managing communication. The amount of the working week spent on email rose from 12% in 2015 to 16% this year.

Other obstacles to work include poor work prioritisation methods (28%), unexpected phone calls (21%) and lack of collaboration with team mates (20%).

Now let’s take a look at the work experience of a freelancer.

Many freelancers use platforms that help manage the process of finding jobs as well as the tasks and workflows required to complete the job. They also help manage payments and communication between them and the client.

Jam-Pan Freelance platforms, ours included, have been created to reduce the administration around finding and doing freelance work. This means that time is freed up for freelancers to get on with the work. This is the number one factor full-time employees said would help with their productivity – uninterrupted blocks of time to actually do the work.

Being outside of an environment that is blighted by so many interruptions also helps freelancers focus 100% on the task that is required. Again, the technology helps with what full time employees say is the second most important factor in  doing better work and that is more efficient work processes.

The technology platforms and project planning tools used by freelancers tend to be more advanced than those used by their employee counterparts, 11% of whom say their productivity would improve if they used more more advanced technology. And 70% either currently use or would like to use a project management tool.

What is common across employees and freelancers is that they want work that is rewarding. Maybe the environment matters and obstacles to productivity negatively affect how rewarding work feels. If that were the case, freelancers could well be the ones who find their work more rewarding.

Ref Link: http://jam-pan.com/blog/hire-a-freelancer-they-face-far-less-obstacles-to-being-productive/