SAN FRANCISCO—Upwork, the largest freelancing website, recently announced Upwork Plus, its first packaged service offering tailored for small businesses.

To help growing businesses connect with and secure top-tier freelance talent, Upwork Plus features on-demand support, greater visibility for job posts, dedicated dashboards for collaboration, and access to an exclusive community board devoted to Upwork Plus customers.

The new solution debuts as unemployment rates remain at just four percent and companies find it increasingly difficult to hire skilled talent. According to Upwork’s 2019 Future Workforce Report, more than three times as many hiring managers reported that hiring had grown harder in the past year, compared to 2018. Of these, small businesses are being hit the hardest, also having to compete with enterprise organizations that offer higher pay and better benefits as the available talent pool shrinks.

To combat the strain small businesses face, Upwork crafted its Plus service to empower companies with teams working together to find and hire talent fast. Plus makes it easier than ever to tap into outstanding freelance talent by offering for the first time:

• On-Demand Support from Account Managers
  Plus provides clients with access to 24/7 customer support and additional on-demand support from account managers to help users post their first job or scale their hiring. Customers can also opt-in for talent specialist services that can assist in sourcing and highlighting top freelancers.
• Greater Visibility through Promoted Job Posts and Client Badge
  Upwork Plus customers will receive a monthly Featured Job, which flags a post as a top job in search results and includes the post in a digest that is sent to Top Rated freelancers. Plus clients will also receive a client badge on the freelancer’s search results page to help attract talent.
• Collaboration Across an Organization
  With a dedicated dashboard, Plus customers can track program efforts across an organization all in one place. It also enables customers to invite colleagues onto a shared account and access collaboration and project status tracking tools.
• Plus Community Board
  Plus customers will also have access to an exclusive community board with guides and resources to help them find success with Upwork. Learning tools and forums will allow new clients to ask questions and share tips with other customers.

“Small businesses are huge drivers of the U.S. economy, and it is essential that they have mechanisms in place to compete in the modern hiring landscape,” said David Abramson, Vice President of Growth at Upwork. “Upwork Plus provides the tools for them to attract top-tier freelance talent, along with access to services previously reserved for Upwork Business and Upwork Enterprise clients. In creating this solution, Plus opens new doors for small businesses, helping them to grow faster and easier than ever before.”

The Role of Freelancers in Growing Businesses

According to the Future Workforce Report, nearly three quarters (72 percent) of high-growth businesses in the U.S. now embrace freelance talent. They anticipate their usage will continue to grow. Eighty-seven percent of those currently leveraging freelancers plan to maintain or increase their usage in 2019. The primary reason high-growth companies engage freelancers is to increase productivity and help alleviate workloads.

Upwork Plus joins Upwork’s Business and Enterprise solutions as part of Upwork’s commitment to help all businesses connect to the most talented workers for their needs.

“Agility is critical to managing our explosive growth,” said Colin Wiel, Co-founder and CTO of MYND, a three-year-old startup disrupting residential property management. “Upwork has allowed us to scale up a 30-person engineering team quickly, accessing amazing talent worldwide. Simultaneously, they empowered us to build a team of remote property management professionals across the U.S. This has transformed our ability to grow quickly.”

Upwork Plus will be available to all users for $49.99/month. To learn more, please visit http://www.upwork.com/i/plus.

About Upwork

Upwork (UPWK) is the largest freelancing website, as measured by Gross Services Volume. It enables businesses to find and work with highly skilled freelancers. As an increasingly connected and independent workforce goes online, knowledge work — like software, shopping and content before it — is shifting online as well. This shift is making it easier for clients to connect and work with talent in near real-time and is freeing professionals everywhere from having to work at a set time and place. Our company’s mission is to create economic opportunities so people have better lives.

Upwork is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., with offices in San Francisco and Chicago. For more information, visit our website at www.upwork.com, join us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.