Feed and water your team for the best results!
Here at AVD we love to do a good job. Our industry is based on trust and confidence to provide the services needed by our clients. Here is a testimonial received today for an event completed last week.
“Thank you for all you did to contribute to the success of last week’s Conference which is widely considered to be the best ever. The technical side of things was absolutely first class. You have a very skilled and professional team.”
Lets concentrate on that last line, “You have a very skilled and professional team.” We like to think we have a good team of full time staff but like every other AV company we rely on freelancers to support our full time staff. This they do very well in addition they also represent AVD while on site and our clients see us a single team. We believe that as such they should be treated with the same respect and equality as our full time staff. Quite right too I hear you say… in this day and age why should this even be mentioned it should be taken as a given. Bear with me on this I am getting to the point…
So why is it that there is an industry trend to not pay freelancers their full invoice? But instead to string out payment for a couple of months if they want 100% of the value and if they insist on being paid at the end of the month they get 5% deducted. This is in our view not a fair and equitable practice, we do not pay our full time staff 2 months in arrears, we do not reduce their wages if they want to be paid at the end of the month.
Freelance staff are individuals, people with monthly bills to pay and families to support. They are not companies, who have resources and agreed credit terms with suppliers, when they do work they expect to be paid.
So we at AVD operate in a different way, we pay our freelancers as soon as we can, irrespective of being paid for the job as yet, usually this is within 14 days. If the funds are there they get paid even quicker. The event commented to above completed on Friday last week (3rd of May) we have paid all the freelance staff today (7th of May). Thanks guys for doing a grand job. 
Treat your staff well and they will promote you, pay them late at your peril.
