It’s the time of year where lots of LinkedIn posts share that agencies and teams are opening their books to find new freelancers to work with.
One post I saw this week even admitted it was time for them to review “the dumpster fire” of their list of freelancers because most had moved on to full-time jobs, and weren’t around any more.
Yup. Far too many businesses make the mistake of throwing up a form in January, capturing email addresses, and then not doing anything with people until they’ve got a brief. Most organisations don’t even know who they already have in their pool, nor are doing any work to get to know the people they’ve called to share their details, or putting in any effort retaining the trusted folk they’ve worked with in 2025.
And freelancers feel it. “Being on a bench has no relationship to getting actual work”, says one. And our feedback audits with businesses echoes similar - that most pools are both oversupplied (more freelancers than briefs), and deathly quiet between the briefs. Being “part of our pool” rarely means more than “being on a google spreadsheet”.
I believe this is the single biggest missed opportunity for businesses who want to work with freelancers. A: to build a genuine relationship with folk who can add creative, commercial and strategic value to your business; B: to reduce costs, time and effort finding people for briefs; C: to improve reputation as a freelance friendly hirer and D: reduce risk and last minute panic by getting proactive, but doing it right.
Just “getting proactive” isn’t enough. Building a list of email addresses is not the same as building an actively engaged pool of trusted people to work with.
That’s why we’ve built Poolside - the community support, engagement and retention plugin for your freelance pool. It’s what keeps the water warm, prevents leaks, and most importantly, nurtures the people you want to have ready, when the brief does land.
But if you’re not ready or willing to commit to community yet, there’s three very simple things you can do, before the end of the year, to start to re-engage with your existing pool (before you go out and start looking for new folk).
1. Run a freelance feedback session - gather anonymous feedback from your pool to see who is still around, how they feel about working with you, and understand your reputation (or ability to hire)
2. Host a 2025 review - share what you’ve been up to, what’s coming next year, and give your people the opportunity to raise their hands on the type of work they’re interested in collaborating on.
3. Consider your preboarding - when people sign up to join your pool, what are they really joining? How can you bring people into your culture, show them around, explain your business, and get them engaged with you, before the first brief lands?
As part of the Poolside process, we do all this with you and for you - baselining your existing pool, defining your poolboarding and alumni experience, and designing your 12 month freelancer engagement plan (which we can deliver, or you can … you choose).
But please, don’t post on LinkedIn without a plan of what to do with those 600 people who subscribed to your google form.
Because I’m confident the good ones won’t stick around for next year.
