On May 15th, the Freelance Isn’t Free Act went into effect in New York City.  Below we share important details of the law and what it means for AV companies working with freelancers in New York City.

Tom Stimson wrote an excellent and insightful article yesterday highlighting his answer to What Do Owners Want For Their Business?  It's an excellent read that every owner and senior leader in an AV company should read.  Especially if the company has an established revenue base and is working to set a strategic direction for the future.

He answers the question of what owners want by focusing on five key themes:

1. Cash Flow
2. Profit
3. Growth
4. Satisfaction
5. Harmony

We thought it would be helpful to examine how AV Labor impacts each of these five themes by specifically highlighting opportunity areas and watch-outs based on our 16+ years experience with leading AV companies. 

Every year the Infocomm show brings something new and exciting to the AV industry.  On the show floor and demo rooms, you have the latest technology from the exhibitors. In the classroom, you have new education sessions being offered by some of the best in the business. This year’s show has the most updates I have seen in quite some time. As a live event professional, here are my top 5 must-see items at the show.

Once you have found a potential AV technician to fill a role on your project, what is your process to qualify this individual to determine if they are the best fit?

Here are 6 best practices to select the right people for your project:

#1 Start Early
A best practice for an operation is to start lining up technicians as soon as you are aware of a project's potential, all the way down to the stagehands. You're not the only company with a busy season so make sure you don’t get stuck competing with others to find techs.  If you wait too long, your available quality will go down and your costs could go up! 

The AV industry relies on a large population of talented freelance technicians. But most AV companies are not experts in understanding how to decide whether a person should be an employee or a contractor, and quite frankly, there are a lot of differing opinions about how to make this determination.

Approving project hours and invoices is never as straight-forward as it should be. When crew members submit their services for your approval, errors and missing details are bound to occur. However, with the Clarify tool on the Mertzcrew approvals page, these corrections don’t need to slow down your approval process.

From an insurance perspective, there are a number of risks and benefits to consider regarding the AV technicians that will work on your project. This is true whether the technician is an employee of your company or is a contracted freelancer for a specific project. In particular, one important risk for you to consider before a contracted freelancer begins work on your project is how your company will manage a  Worker’s Compensation claim (or worse, a lawsuit!) from injuries incurred by the contractor while working on your project.

At Mertzcrew, we’re all about simplicity. Our all-in-one AV crew management platform has given AV companies the ability to centralize project details, services/hours rendered, payments, communications, project updates, and more for both the company’s employees and the freelancers Mertzcrew helps to contract.

While we designed our online, AV Crew Management system to be intuitive and easy to use, we knew that challenges and questions would still come up. When they do, your team needs answers, and fast -- especially when you’re in the midst of coordinating a project on a tight timeline.

We are happy to announce that our recently released Help Center will help you find all of the answers you need so you don’t have to stop working on your projects.

It takes a team to complete an AV project, but keeping that team organized can be just as challenging as getting the project done.