If you are using an Online Business Manager or recruiting one, you need a contract to protect the pair of you. You are letting someone into the very heart of your business. You are going to have to let them see and change the business processes and that means giving them access to confidential information, systems, and information about your customers.
An Online Business Manager can help you break the log jam
It’s a tough step for some of us as it means putting someone between you and the team. How do you know if it’s time?
Are you struggling to find time to talk to the freelancers you pay or brief them on the work you want them to do?
Are you working long hours despite increasing the size of your team?
Do things go wrong because team members don’t know what other team members are doing?
Does all your tech stack and team expenditure still leave you exhausted and running around catching up?
At this point, an Online Business Manager can step in and help to break that log jam.
What can an Online Business Manager do?
An Online Business Manager can help you create and implement strategies and plans, or manage a team .
They are not simply an efficient Virtual Assistant, or a great tech VA (though those skills can help).
They are capable of operating at a strategic and operational level in your business. It is more about being the freelance equivalent of ‘middle or senior management’ but without the commitment to each other that employment usually brings.
What are the risks?
Some Online Business Managers have their own associate teams with skills ready to use. Others will assist you in building your freelance team but help with planning, implementation, and keeping everyone on track.
1) Purchasing on your behalf. You both need clear limits of authority on who is doing what. Your OBM can have the power to bind you into contracts if they seem to have the authority to do so (even if they don’t). That is called ‘ostensible’ authority. So saying I didn’t authorise that won’t always get you out of trouble.
2) Setting up systems you don’t own the rights to. You need to make sure that you are the primary user for all the software and bots used in your business. This is partly because you are the data controller (and need to be able to choose who sees what) and partly because you will one day need to offboard your Online Business Manager even if they are fabulous as freelance roles don’t last for ever.
3) You need to be clear about your OBM’s rights when it comes to letting other people into your systems. This should only be after that person is under a proper contract (with them or with you depending on your set up) and with your knowledge. Secret outsourcing is on longer viable if you want to keep your data secure and comply with data privacy legislation.
4) You need to make sure your data privacy policy is up to date with how and whom you are sharing data with. If they are not employees they are 3rd party data processors and should covered in your data privacy policy.
5) You need to make sure you are issuing a data processing agreement with appropriate security instructions and that all freelancers, whether contracted directly with you or with your OBM are contracted in line with that.
6) You need to be clear about whether freelancers are using any form of AI and whether that can come near your systems or is being used to create content.
It’s important to properly contract with your Online Business Manager
All of these points and more should be covered in the agreement you have with your Online Business Manager. And if their standard terms are not adequate to current standards in the UK you need to source an agreement that is .
From correctly passing on copyright from creator to end client (via any AI-related issues you need to tackle) , to confidentiality, via tax liabilities and data privacy you will find the team works best when the contracts are properly aligned with the project you are all working on.
That may seem like an abstract concept, but if your livelihood depends on content creation and customer data, you need to sort these things out.
AI-ready OBM and team contracts are needed
We’ve given that a lot of thought and put together an Online Business Manager contract for the person you hire.. We have used all the thinking and contract drafting that went into our AI ready range so you don’t have to puzzle through all of the options.
