Free agents are a new reality. But only a few companies are competent enough to use them. Is yours one of them?

By Carsten Bjerregaard, CEO Marketingcapacity.dk

It is an international trend that freelancers are becoming an increasingly important part of companies’ setups. But does your company know how to use them optimally? Here are five steps that can prepare your marketing department for a new form of collaboration.

Freelancers as a strategic capacity – not just a tactical addition

It is not just practical to draw on freelancers, it is increasingly strategically necessary. In the tech industry, we have seen a new “golden era” for highly specialized freelancers, whom companies integrate directly into their teams. In some cases, freelancers are given responsibility for leading key projects over longer periods. Wired Magazine reported in 2024 that, especially when it comes to AI and data-related roles, many companies are choosing to collaborate with freelancers because it provides quick access to skills that they do not have themselves – and which can take months to hire.

The American agency Wripple highlights in their report “5 Benefits of Using Marketing Freelancers” (2023) that companies achieve both flexibility, higher quality and better time-to-market when they incorporate freelancers as a permanent part of their capacity – especially in marketing functions, where the pace and need for specialization are high.

According to a LinkedIn Workforce Report from 2024, 55% of all workplaces stand to be affected by AI and automation. This has created a growing realization in many companies: It may simply be strategically necessary to use freelancers in order to be able to adapt and solve new tasks.

Instead of covering all areas of competence with permanent employees, marketing teams bring in specialists exactly when they are needed – for example. This creates a more agile organization that can more easily adapt to the changing demands of the market. It is a bit like manufacturing companies, where semi-finished products and materials do not sit in a warehouse for months but arrive exactly when they are needed in production.

It’s Just in Time – a well-known philosophy in the world of production. What if you think about human resources the same way? So that you don’t have to have everything in stock (or on the payroll) all the time. But where the fixed capacity can be supplemented flexibly and precisely when the need arises. That’s actually the essence of working strategically with freelancers and external consultants.

And here’s where it gets interesting: Many companies already use freelancers – but few do it with the same professionalism and precision that they would expect from their fixed production setup. To succeed with that, it doesn’t just require new tools. It requires a new culture. A new way of seeing your organization. Not as a static structure with permanent positions, but as a dynamic platform where capacity and skills can be connected when it makes sense.

For almost 10 years, I have introduced hundreds of marketing freelancers to larger companies in Denmark. Here is a suggestion for five strategic steps that will help you become an organization that not only can work with freelancers – but is good at it.

1. Make it a strategic capability – not just ad hoc firefighting

Working effectively with externals is not a random ability that suddenly appears. It is a competency that you as a company must build and anchor – and it starts with management. If your company still sees freelancers as an “emergency response” that steps in when someone gets sick or the campaign drags on, then you will never get the best out of the collaboration.

Instead, you should see working with externals as a strategic capability – on par with your ability to recruit, develop or manage internal teams. It is not about replacing permanent employees – but about enabling the organization to attract, integrate and activate knowledge exactly when it is needed. Just in Time.

Tip: Put working with external capacity on the agenda of both the management team and the board. It is a strategic capability – not just an HR task.

2. Think of onboarding as a mini version of hiring

Freelancers don’t have to go to MUS interviews or Christmas parties – but they still need to be onboarded if you want to get value quickly. This means access to relevant systems, access to knowledge, contacts, briefings and a clear task description. Too many companies fail here – they forget that it is their responsibility to ensure that the external person can contribute. Not just the freelancer’s.

A good collaboration starts with establishing the context: What is the task about? What do we need to achieve? What have we done before? What works – and what doesn’t? It doesn’t require a two-week introductory course, but it does require something.

Example: A client sends a freelance copywriter a half-page briefing and expects a campaign on Monday. But the copywriter may not know anything about tone-of-voice, target audience, or previous campaigns. Guess what happens? Spend one hour on onboarding – and save 10 hours of rewriting.

3. Make the collaboration flexible – but also binding

Free agents expect flexibility – that’s why they chose the freelance life. But that doesn’t mean the collaboration has to be loose. Clear agreements, regular feedback meetings and clear deadlines are not the opposite of flexibility – they are the prerequisite for flexibility to work.

It’s about building bridges between the internal teams and the external forces. Use tools that support collaboration – such as Trello, Asana or Notion – and have fixed points of contact. Many freelancers work for multiple clients at the same time, so unclear communication quickly ends up as wasted time (and extra invoices).

Tip: Maybe create a fixed format for collaboration – for example, a simple Trello board with to-do, doing and done – so that both the team and the freelancer can keep up without daily emails.

4. Integrate – but don’t over-integrate

Freelancers don’t need to be part of your internal Slack channel on Friday mornings. But they do need to feel like they’re part of something. A typical mistake is to make it either-or: Either the freelancer is thrown in as an “external external” or you try to make them part of the team on the same terms as everyone else.

The truth lies somewhere in between. Give them access to what they need – information, project status, relevant colleagues – but without drowning them in the internal noise of the company. When you strike the balance that works for you, a kind of trust-based connection is created, where the freelancer works with you – not just for you.

Example: A marketing team invites their freelance SEO specialist to a weekly 15-minute status meeting – but not to the daily Slack discussions. It provides enough context – without overkill.

5. Learn to manage, evaluate and (most importantly) let go

Even a good freelance process ends at some point. But many forget to evaluate the collaboration: What went well? What should we do differently next time? And at least as important: To properly close. Invoice, access, data – and maybe a little “thank you for this time” email. It creates a good final impression – and makes it much easier to get people back later.

A systematic collaboration with freelancers works best if you see it as a cycle: Identify, onboard, integrate, collaborate, evaluate, and phase out. When it becomes part of your practice, flow and mutual professionalism arise – and not just random projects of varying quality.

Tip: Spend 15 minutes on an “offboarding call” where you just clean up and close. It doesn’t take long – but it means a lot.

How do you equip the organization?

It requires more than procedures and tools. It requires a change in culture. A general understanding in the organization that knowledge and skills can come from outside – and that it creates extra value in the company. That people should not be measured by whether they are permanent employees of the company, but by what they contribute.

And that requires courage from middle managers and project managers: Courage to give responsibility to someone you may have never met physically. Courage to set clear demands – but also to give freedom. And then it requires trust. Not naive trust – but professional trust based on clear agreements and good communication.

Example: Many larger companies are now creating internal “talent pools”. A kind of ecosystem with preferred freelancers who can be quickly called in when the need arises. This makes it easier for project managers to act quickly – and creates relationships that work.

Free agents are not a threat – they are an opportunity

Using freelancers requires a more modern culture of collaboration. It requires new interfaces, new tools and, not least: Trust. But it pays off. Because when you make it work, you have access to a huge reservoir of talent, experience and pace – without large recruitment processes or expensive agency agreements.

And yes – it requires a new way of looking at your business. Not as a fixed number of employees in a specific building. But as a movement. A process. An open organism that can draw in the right capacity at the right time.

It is not the future. It is the present. The question is: Are you ready?