Hi, I’m Victoria Chemko, Founder of Umami Marketing. After working on my own as more of a freelancer for the first year of the company, I wanted to build a virtual agency of specialists to allow for more expertise and flexibility, for both myself and our client partners. At that point, I knew that it would be important to hire a global team to help with this goal, and started to look – which resulted in hiring the first 5 contractors within 6 months of making that decision – all of whom I continue to work with today (plus many more). At this point, Umami has a team of about 10 contractors who work together regularly, and we’re also partnered with an over 35 person WordPress design and development team, which was only made up of 5 people when we started our partnership. 

Here are some strategies to keep in mind in order to hire, manage, and retain a great global team.

Test & Hire Through Paid Trial Gigs

I’m very grateful that I’ve managed to build a team to date mostly through referrals and my own network. The team has stayed together over the longer term, and of course it helps make decisions to hire easier when I have a recommendation from someone I trust, or have already worked with the person in some former capacity. However, at times, I have needed to stretch a bit further afield, and hire from places like UpWork, where it’s been helpful to take some time to hire the right person. What’s helpful is to ensure being very clear and specific on your expectations and the role itself, and also get a sense of the potential hire’s past successes, where reviews and history are great to understand. From there, once you have a shortlist, I recommend trying out small paid work packages to start, with real deliverables, and seeing how the contractor performs – after filtering out as much as possible from the beginning, this is the best way to really learn if someone can do the job. From there, you can then decide to hire for larger or more permanent positions. 

Hire Slowly & Fire Fast Manage Well

First of all, the testing out and process of hiring of the right person for your needs can be a slow process. I’ve taken the time to be very thorough and particular about who I choose to work with, as I find it’s much easier to do this than to pick someone quickly, only to find out that it was the wrong choice, and you’ve wasted a lot of time and energy and need to start over again. It’s key to ensure that both the contractor and the business and yourself are aligned in terms of your goals. 

Once you’ve taken the time to hire a contractor for a longer-term role, it’s key to make sure to continue to communicate, communicate, communicate, and manage based on the individual – what works well for them. Some people like more structure than others, while others prefer to be left to their own devices for the most part – as you spend more time working together and ask enough questions, you’ll continue to gain a better understanding of how this will work best. 

Setup Processes and SOPs

One thing so many mentors and friends in the entrepreneurial space told to do from the beginning of my business was to always document the process while I worked, to ensure that it would be easier to share this information and build a team at a later date. It’s also helpful as it not only makes things more efficient each time you onboard or work with a new client, or go through the same process for a specific type of project, but it also streamlines the learning for anyone new to the role. 

From the initial stages of the business, I documented everything as a template within Google Drive, and also setup step-by-step task templates within Asana, which is our current tool for tracking tasks across projects. As new team members joined in, they’d become responsible for continuing to tweak any of the processes, templates and SOPs as we learned something new, to try to keep everything as up to date and optimized as possible, and reduce the time it would take to do this at a later date. 

As you continue working on similar projects, you’ll continue to refine and adjust as needed, which is all a part of the experience and the journey. 

Use Online Tools

As we are a globally distributed team, with most team members in Vancouver, but also others spread throughout North America and Europe, it’s been very important to use cloud-based online tools to help with ensuring everyone is on the same page. As mentioned before, some of these key tools include:

• Google Drive (for documentation, spreadsheets, and surveys)
• Asana (for project and task management)
• InVision (for mockups and design flows)
• Skype
• Google Hangouts
• Zoom (for video web-based conference calls)
• Other Platforms such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Slack for more regular day-to-day communications

Meet & Communicate Regularly

As we aren’t all co-located in a single place, it’s important to keep the lines of communication open at all times – and not just communicate regularly via tools like email, web-based video calls, and messaging applications, but to also set regular meetings, at a cadence that works well within various project groups and team members. For us, this tends to not be a consistent daily “stand-up” meeting, unless we’re in the midst of web development more fast-paced or high-risk stages of the project, so we will either set weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly meetings, to ensure that we check-in, even if we’re not sure if there will be a lot to cover. Providing the time and space to have a conversation will often uncover little things that you won’t realize are important and will be helpful once shared.

Summary

To summarize, here are 5 key tips to help you manage a Global Team:

1. Test & Hire Through Paid Trial Gigs
2. Hire Slowly & Fire Fast Manage Well
3. Setup Processes and SOPs
4. Use Online Tools
5. Meet & Communicate Regularly

Now that you know more about the best ways to manage a Global Team, please check out our recent blog posts covering useful Inbound Marketing tips. If you liked this video, subscribe to the Umami Marketing YouTube Channel and the monthly Digital Marketing Postcard.