How To Use Your Upwork Enterprise Account

The world's biggest work innovators—high-performing, forward-looking companies—are embracing independent talent and digital transformation, including generative AI.

But only 23% of business leaders say their organizations are ready to embrace successful distributed, flexible work and new tech at the same time.

If you're an Upwork Enterprise customer, you already have the tools you need to do exactly this at your disposal—from sourcing global talent to leveraging Uma™, Upwork’s Mindful AI, to help you work faster and better than ever before.

Here's how you can make Upwork Enterprise work for you:

• How To Use Your Upwork Enterprise Account
• Control how your team uses Upwork Enterprise
• Get more done with Uma, Upwork’s Mindful AI
• Work with the top 1% of talent on Upwork
• Get talent sourcing help
• Easily pay independent talent

Streamline your work with the Enterprise Dashboard

The Upwork Enterprise Dashboard is your home base for finding and working with talent. It’s used and trusted by companies around the world, from small businesses and startups to large corporations—including one-third of the Fortune 500.

And now, it’s your entry point into the world’s work marketplace, too.

The Enterprise Dashboard includes all of the features you need to increase internal adoption of the platform and hire independent talent, including:

• Immediate access to the top 1% of professionals on Upwork, including solo service providers and agencies
• Personalized lists of top-tier talent
• Simple coworker account management
• Onboarding checklists for new hiring managers
• Personalized task lists
• Job post creation tools
• On-demand contract auditing with spend reports
• Personalized task management tools
• Project management tools

Integrate Upwork Enterprise with other software

While Upwork Enterprise’s custom solutions make it easy to find, hire, and pay independent talent all in one spot, we know that you rely on additional tools to run your operations, too.

Upwork integrations allow you to pass your data back and forth between your Enterprise account and critical business software like applicant tracking systems, HR systems, and procurement tools.

Get an at-a-glance overview of what's next

When you have an action to take—such as approving a contract—it'll appear as a to-do item on your Enterprise Dashboard.

You can also see a quick summary of:

• Your team's total spend this week
• Expenditure on hourly contracts
• Expenditure on fixed-price contracts

Together, this information keeps you informed about how your team is using and spending through Upwork ... as well as what's waiting for your approval or engagement.

Don't worry, though—you can also dig deeper into this information through the reports section of your account. From active contracts to talent performance metrics, we're tracking  the metrics that matter most to you.

Learn how Upwork Enterprise can help you scale.

Control how your team uses Upwork Enterprise

When you first set up your Upwork Enterprise client account, it's a good idea to customize the platform to best suit your needs.

You can begin this process right on the Enterprise Dashboard—here’s how it works, step by step.

1. Set up single sign-on (SSO)

Upwork Enterprise supports SSO access using any SAML 2.0 identity provider (IdP).

Compatible IdPs include Okta, Microsoft Azure, and OneLogin.

If your organization uses a compatible service, setting up SSO right away can give your account an added layer of security.

Companies that aren't using a SAML 2.O IdP can still use Upwork Enterprise—each of your team members will need to set a login credential when you add them to your account.

2. Add other hiring managers

To add team members, click the plus sign in the upper right corner of your screen, just under the words "your coworkers." This brings you to a screen that allows you to invite colleagues.

Once you send your coworker an invite, they'll get access to your Upwork Enterprise account.

You can review their job posts and talent contracts on a per-person level at any time. Select a team, then click on your coworkers’ pictures on the upper right side of your Enterprise Dashboard. A list will pop up, and you can click the three dots next to any team member's name to see more information.

You can also create onboarding checklists to help new hiring managers get up to speed quickly.

3. Toggle between teams

You can organize your colleagues, projects, and talent into different teams. Simply set up different teams in your account settings to get started.

You can then toggle between viewing different teams’ activities using the drop-down menu on your dashboard.

4. Customize contract terms and purchase orders

You can standardize the verbiage used on your Upwork Enterprise contracts and purchase orders in just a few steps.

Click on your profile picture, or the person icon, at the top of your Upwork Enterprise Dashboard and select "settings."

Select the section labeled "Upwork Enterprise." Here, you'll be able to create custom reporting fields, purchase order numbers, contract terms, and more.

You can even restrict which team members may edit these settings in the future.

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Get more done with Uma, Upwork’s Mindful AI

Uma, Upwork’s Mindful AI, is built right into your everyday Upwork workflow. Uma draws on Upwork’s data and acts as a companion to help you evaluate talent proposals, create job posts, and more.

Getting started with Uma is easy—simply opt in to the service in your account settings and Uma will begin appearing throughout your Upwork experience. Your data is governed by Upwork’s Privacy Policy and won’t be used to train third party service providers’ internal networks.

Use AI to accelerate the hiring process

Our Job Post Generator, powered by Uma, helps you quickly craft the job posts that attract the independent talent you need.

To start your first job post, click on the "post a job" icon found on the Enterprise Dashboard.

Then, describe the kind of talent you’re looking for—and the project you need help with—in a few sentences.

The generator will take the information you’ve shared and create a fully customizable draft post for your input and review. You can edit it yourself and also ask Uma to make tweaks to the post's details, tone, and more.

As soon as you're happy with the output, you can post it with a click, speeding up your workflow.

In fact, during our initial testing phase, we observed that new clients who utilize the job post generator are able to post jobs almost twice as fast when compared to those who don't.

Work with the top 1% of talent on Upwork

Posting jobs through your Enterprise account doesn't only give you access to great talent—it gives you access to the best talent on Upwork.

Browse Expert-Vetted talent

When browsing talent profiles or proposals, you'll get to see something exclusive to Enterprise users: the Expert-Vetted talent badge.

We award this talent badge to the top 1% of independent professionals on Upwork.

Our Talent Managers pre-vet every person with this badge through soft skill assessments and hard skill reviews. You can spot Expert-Vetted talent with the help of a yellow badge:

These pros also have experience with Enterprise clients like you—and are ready to deliver the high-quality work you need.

Shortlist your favorite talent profiles

You don't need to worry about losing your favorite talent profiles with Upwork Enterprise, either. By clicking the heart icon on any profile, regardless of talent badge, you can save and organize profiles into lists.

Plus, we automatically create lists for everyone you or your colleagues have hired. You can revisit their profiles and start a new contract in just a few clicks.

Build talent clouds of trusted professionals

We'll also automatically add everyone you (or your colleagues) work with to your Talent Cloud.

Think of this like your own private talent pool full of proven pros who are already familiar with your company.

When you search for professionals with specific skills, we'll show you talent cloud members at the top of the results—but you can also browse your company's previous hires and see if someone is in your talent cloud by looking along the left side of their profile page.

If they're in your talent cloud, it'll say so beneath their verification and education history.

Get support for classification determinations

Enterprise compliance WPP users can turn to Upwork’s Classification Compliance feature for help onboarding talent while mitigating the risks of misclassification.

We work to interpret the complex, ever-changing classification rules based on geography and job requirements—then deliver a classification determination to help you best decide how to work with talent: as an independent contractor or as an employee.

Classification Compliance is part of the offer experience, so you’ll get information and updates as you begin moving forward with talent. Classification determinations are based on your offer details, the talent you want to engage, and applicable law.

Create contracts with Upwork Enterprise

When you're ready to hire an independent professional, you can turn your job post into a contract easily, complete with the preferred terms and verbiage that you defined during your account setup.

You can add specific contract requirements for each job, too.

Onboard your favorite pros

Upwork Enterprise accounts also allow you to onboard independent talent you're already working with outside of the Upwork platform.

Once you migrate talent, you can view their contracts and payment details alongside the pros you've sourced through Upwork.

It's free for your talent to join Upwork, too; they won't pay any service fees on earnings through this contract.

You can review these talent profiles and contracts easily by visiting the "talent" section of your Upwork account and then selecting "BYO talent."

Keep an eye on contract activity

Upwork’s Contract Audit feature, available in the reports menu, gives you at-a-glance reports of how your team is using Upwork—and how much you’re spending on talent through the platform.

These customizable reports are helpful for identifying patterns in the way you use Upwork. If you find there’s a contract audit report that’s particularly helpful to you, build a custom report template that you can continue to reuse.

Get talent sourcing help

Your Upwork Enterprise account comes with a dedicated customer support team including an account manager, solutions architect, Upwork Professional, and program success managers who can help you source just the right pros for a job.

Outsource everything with Upwork Managed Services

When you need broad support for a specific initiative or function at your company, Managed Services can step in and make outcomes happen.

When you have a traditional Upwork Enterprise account, your team handles the day-to-day management of key business processes, compliance, project deliverables, and talent payment.

By relying on Managed Services, you’re outsourcing the full project lifecycle to Upwork, including:

• Talent sourcing and onboarding
• Classification
• Project management and deliverables

We'll leverage highly skilled talent on our platform to deliver the results you need. We offer managed services for projects like

• Web development and software development
• Web design and graphic design
• Content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO)
• Sales and lead generation
• Data migration
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning

And if your needs change, that's no problem. Whether you need to scale up, down, or pivot your focus completely, we can scale and adapt your program. Plus, we’ll partner with you and fully take on managing delivery by the workforce and related compliance obligations.

Easily pay independent talent

When you source independent talent through other means, payment can become complicated—invoices may be due on different days, with different terms and accounts.

But when paying your independent workforce through Upwork, it's a streamlined process.

Whether you're using Upwork Payroll or working with several independent contractors, you'll get a single invoice to pay each month.

The talent you work with will receive payment on their regular schedule, too—offering reliability that independent pros greatly appreciate.

Scale faster with support from the Upwork team

Ultimately, one of the biggest benefits of Upwork Enterprise is the support you get from a dedicated group of our team members. We're here to help beginners and seasoned pros alike get the most out of our Enterprise solutions—from navigating the dashboard and finding talent to deciding when it's the right time for Managed Services.

Help from your support team is just a click away on your Enterprise Dashboard.

And if you're not yet an Enterprise customer, we'd love to help you get started—send our team a message to learn more about what Upwork Enterprise can bring to your organization.

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Upwork does not control, operate, or sponsor the other tools or services discussed in this article, which are only provided as potential options. Each reader and company should take the time to adequately analyze and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation.