Blog

If a picture tells a thousand words, I’d love to find out how many words a video gets across, especially an animatics video in the deft hands of The Incite Group.  It is an incredible medium for story telling.

In thinking about our anchor video, there was no question that it needed to speak to the independent consultants and freelancers.  After talking extensively with these independent professionals about their world, we wanted to try and capture the intersection of their story with the story of Mavenlink.

We hope you enjoy our take on how Mavenlink supports the ever changing workforce.

Business Week recently presented a somewhat gloomy outlook for the US worker entitled “The Disposable Worker”.  Citing numerous statistics, the article lays out in excruciating detail the challenges facing the “permanent temporary workforce”.

• Bonuses tied to managing costs and maximizing short term profits creates incentives for managers to minimize full time staff.
• The increased accessibility of talented onshore and offshore resources allows corporations to find “just in time” resources lowers the risk of delays, lower quality work or increased costs historically associated with contract labor.
• The use of temporary or contract resources spans across the entire workforce, from “sneaker footed admins” to executives.
• “A lack of job security and health-care benefits, as well as social ties to the rest of the workforce, increase stress levels for temps and contractors.”
• The decades long pattern of the American worker accepting lower pay is likely to continue.
• Pulling few punches, the authors even go so far as to point out that “temporary or contract workers face a higher risk of developing mental health problems like depression”. 

From my perspective, there is no question the US worker faces unique challenges in the face of these driving corporate changes, and I think the attention brought to the issue by Business Week is critical.  However, it seems hard to fathom that the changes afoot are being driven exclusively by corporate America.  Job satisfaction has seen a steady decline since 1987, dropping steadily from 61.1% to the 2009 response of 45.3%.   Playing into these job satisfaction numbers is the impact corporate America is having on the quality of life of its employees.  Looking at the same time period, from 1987 to 2009, non-farm workers have been squeezed for a combined 57.2% increase in output/hour, with a 26.6% rise in total hours worked.  That makes a huge difference in the amount of time spent working for your employer and the stress levels during those working hours.  It’s no wonder you hear people talking about the “rat race”, working around the clock, and never being able to leave the job behind even on vacation.  In this environment, the US worker is understandably going to be considering all alternatives exclusive of corporate initiatives.

One of the things that the team at Mavenlink is most proud of and vows to protect is the high quality of the Mavens that have joined our charter community. There is no question that the individuals and firms that have signed up to date are impressive both in the depth of there expertise and there ability to deliver valuable services to the small business clients that need there help. As we continue to roll out new features to showcase the talents of our Mavens, you will see us work passionately to maintain the high caliber of professionals that we hope our clients and maven community come to expect from Mavenlink.

Measures in place:

1. Screening of Maven profiles, backgrounds and experience
2. Requiring real names and robust profiles for transparency on the site
3. Linkages to other social and business networks
4. Community Feedback- Ratings provided by peers and Clients relating to quality of services and real work performed on Mavenlink
5. Building a business model that targets quality of service not quantity of providers or bidders
6. Groups for peer to peer development and education

Upcoming Maven Programs:

1. Updates to the find a Maven experience
2. Enhancement of the Maven Profile and Mavenlink promotion and marketing of individual Mavens
3. Training, Skill Development and Career Development to succeed as Mavens in the new economies of work
4. Additional Screens to validate certifications, background
5. Development of a business connections within Mavenlink focused on expanding your trusted personal network for getting work done

Our goals for these initiatives are pretty straightforward. The quality of the Maven community is critical to build Client trust. When deciding whether or not to conduct work within Mavenlink, we know potential Clients are interested in assessing not only the Mavenlink platform but also the resources available to them, often starting their evaluation of the site at Meet our Mavens. The expertise and targeted coverage of our Maven community will continue to be a differentiator for us all. Additionally, we want to develop a level of trust between Mavens, enabling the community to swarm together and collaborate where appropriate to solve complex, multi disciplinary challenges and projects. If we are successful in developing a strong and talented pool of expert providers, there is limitless potential in the work that can be done by the community. If we are successful, Mavenlink will be a site that enhances, not detracts, your personal brand.

As Projects begin to flow into the Mavenlink system, I wanted to share some initial first hand experiences and learnings from my first three Projects as a Client on Mavenlink.

1. Posting Projects as a Client can be almost addicting. It will change the way you think about interacting with external professionals and how you get work done.

2. Managing Projects within Mavenlink provides definition and visibility. I was able to keep tabs on my Projects and quickly share with other colleagues within Mavenlink how things were going, what my extended team was working on, and budgetary guidance for the effort. As Mavenlink roles out groups within the system in the near future, I will be able to provide direct visibility to the progress on my Posted projects with identified colleagues.

3. Posting Projects in Mavenlink is extremely simple, but every ounce of thought put in to the Post will be rewarded in terms of attracting Mavens and speeding the engagement process.

4. Don’t let pricing deter you. On two of my Projects, I needed help refining the appropriate budgetary guidance from the Maven population. Let the Mavens help you establish reasonable budgetary parameters once the Project is clarified and you have the ability to evaluate multiple proposals.

5. Mavens will take advantage of the up front messaging and collaboration opportunities within the system to clarify Project details. Help them help you.

6. Your level of responsiveness in the system is contagious. Just like in your offline relationships, actions speak louder than words. On two of my projects I made a conscientious effort to respond as quickly as possible, and noticed clearly that the Mavens were more responsive as a result. On a third project, I unintentionally dropped the ball and missed a message for nearly four days. You can imagine how hard it was to complain about my Maven’s lack of response for 24 hours.

7. Years of email inertia is hard to overcome. Especially on the first couple of Projects, I had to focus on uploading documents instead of sending emails (see 8 below).

8. Uploading documents and capturing the conversation with my Maven inside of Mavenlink pays dividends. Having all of the communication history, the agreed upon documentation, the interim deliverables and the final deliverables in one place came in handy. As Mavenlink expands the collaboration tools available to both Mavens and Clients, making it easier to never leave the site, this collection of information related to the engagement will become invaluable.

9. Notifications and Messaging are key. As we worked through these initial projects, it became apparent that the ability of Mavens and Clients to interact outside of the workspace is important. You’ll continue to see features rolled out to extend and improve the Notifications and Messaging within Mavenlink.

10. Payment within the Paypal system was quick and easy. Paying with Paypal is straightforward and instantaneous. Paying with a credit card is equally smooth as long as you have not exceeded your credit card payment maximum, as established by Paypal ($2000 during any 90 day period).

To Learn more about Mavenlink, please visit: www.mavenlink.com or on Twitter at twitter.com/mavenlink

Those who have been on the site lately hopefully noticed a new, prominently placed navy blue “Feedback” widget on the right hand side of every page inside Mavenlink. While we are a seemingly safe distance away from widget overload, I still thought it important to share the team’s thoughts behind the new inclusion and how it stands to benefit our young community.

The Feedback widget brings Get Satisfaction’s “people powered customer service” technology front and center (or slightly right justified) into the Mavenlink experience. It is a powerful way for our new users, both Clients and Mavens, to engage in a dialogue with the Mavenlink team on a number of fronts.

First and foremost, the Feedback widget allows any Mavenlink user or visitor to share an idea and allow others, both Mavenlink employees and the Mavenlink community, to rate these ideas. While the Share an Idea tab within the Feedback system could be used for just about any ideas a user might have, I see it as most applicable for feature requests and usability enhancements. With the capability to rate existing Ideas, the Share an Idea tab will give employees and community members alike a chance to submit, review and vote on potential improvements to the Site.

Besides sharing ideas, the Feedback widget also provides users the opportunity to Ask a Question or Report a Problem. Central to any customer support experience, we wanted to have a centralized place where the Mavenlink team could swarm together to provide our new users with a valuable support experience, while also capturing findings and lessons learned for other users and the Mavenlink development team. We will be watching this closely, both to ensure the best possible experience for our users, and to see if the tool meets our near term needs. Please take advantage of the opportunity to ask us (and your fellow community members) anything about the Mavenlink Service or report any bugs or issues you have while working with the site.

Lastly, the Feedback widget offer the opportunity to Give Praise. At the risk of begging for a compliment, we considered making this the default tab as you launched the Feedback widget, but figured that might be a little much. Sure, everyone enjoys a little well deserved praise (hint, hint huge brownie points), but in terms of priorities, it’s tough to supplant the importance of capturing feature ideas, answering customer questions, and fixing identified issues. So for now, we’ll take what we can get, and reserve the right to beg for praise down the road.

I know we’ve said it a number of different ways, most recently through action in creating this widget, but I believe it deserves repeating. Being able to capture, track and act upon our community’s feedback is a core focus of the Mavenlink team. We are excited to begin working with the Get Satisfaction technology to make our focus a reality.

A quick thank you once again to all of our new charter Mavens. Your participation and feedback is invaluable to us.

One of the things that we have heard and witnessed first hand is that the overall profile completion process needs work. Some users have been running into confusion around i) differences between basic information and the complete Maven Profile ii) what is a Maven Profile v. a Client Profile iii) should users align their profile around their company or individuals within the company.

For those who have already signed up, we have made some minor tweaks already to the in depth Maven Profile creation/edit page. However, this is just the first step. We will be meeting with our stellar user experience design partners (nb.io) next week to work through a new and improved sign up process, start to finish.