1/ Working with Department for Business and Trade.

DBT and the office of the Small Business Commissioner have been running an open consultancy on new policies for tackling late payments, and we’ve been feeding in our insights from a self-employment perspective. We hosted a roundtable between the policy team and a number of freelancers who shared their experiences, and thoughts on the new policies. The consultation is now closed, and we expect to hear a response in the new year.

2/ Another audit for a Freelance Friendly business

We’ve just wrapped another Freelance Feedback audit for a business with a collective of freelancers. This is the most recent audit we’ve run, and we’re starting to see a number of key themes reappearing across organisations. I shared some of the insights below - and if you’re keen to listen to your pool, drop me a note.

3/ Redundancy and Self-Employment

We’ll be joining the team at in November for a morning session supporting those facing redundancy. Details are here. We’re also working with Club Redundo to develop something shortly too. Our “Redundancy to Freelancing” guide has had over 500 people use it. Which is great, but also … I wish it wasn’t neccessary.

4/ Content planning for 2026

I’m in the middle of planning a series of 12 webinars for 2026, covering topics like MTD, IR35, insurance, contracts, etc, and looking for partners who might be keen to support the programme (either as a brand or as an expert).

5/ Leapers survey

We’ve passed the 700 participant mark, but still keen to push for 1000 responses. If you haven’t taken part yet, please do, and please share far and wide. leapers.co/research

What are we hearing from freelance pools?

For the past three months, I’ve been working with a number of organisations who have pools of freelancers.

We run impartial and independent freelance feedback audits to understand engagement, relationships and reputation, so the hirer can spot any issues, frustrations or leaks in their talent pool; and provide guidance on improving things for both sides.

Whilst every audit provides very different results, there are some frequent themes, which I thought I’d share for the benefit of anyone working with freelancers.

1/ Hesitation to ask: most of our hiring organisations are a little worried to ask for feedback, concerned it might expose issues. No-one likes receiving bad feedback - but having hard evidence of what is working, and what is causing issues is essential, so you can focus on what matters most.

2/ Bloated Dormancy: there’s often a mismatch between number of people in a pool, and the volume of work. perhaps the organisation went on a “finding freelancers spree”, so they have potential people should a brief come in, or perhaps they worked with people once, and haven’t again, but never formally or informally parted ways. This creates a false over-confidence in “having people we can use” and a frustration from freelancers they’ve never had work from you.

3/ Tangible vs Possible: There’s a tension in asking around project availability. On the one hand, there’s lots of last minute briefing “are you available on monday?”, and on the other there’s lots of “there might be a brief” without something being confirmed. It’s a challenge for both the hirer and freelancer.

4/ People beat Process: The most common positive feedback is always about specific people who make working together a positive experience. We always get feedback on specific named individuals who just made the whole thing great. Where automation might improve process, people improve relationships.

It’s no longer enough to just have a list of email addresses of people you think are waiting for a brief.

Good collaboration with good freelancers takes good design.

If you’re keen to audit your own pool, drop me a note, and we go much further than just asking. We work with businesses to help them identify how to better engage, support and retain their top freelancers too.

That’s all from me
✌️ mk