How do you successfully find and manage remote workers?

I’m writing a guide and need your input: What are your tips for successfully finding and managing remote workers? Send your response using this form. If I include your response in the guide, I’ll give you credit!

What

I’m working on a guide to hiring, supervising and working with remote workers (freelance, full-time employees, and everything in between). It will be a comprehensive resource for hiring and retaining geographically dispersed staff members.

Why

I keep hearing how difficult and hit-or-miss it can be to work with remote staff members. This guide will be incredibly valuable to the GoSmallBusiness community since there are new platforms and tools popping up, such as freeeup.com and upwork.com. We’ve had a lot of success with remote teams as we built the best online appointment scheduling software for small business. We utilized several tactics and platforms when building features such as the appointment scheduling app UI and best calendar reminder app interface of GoReminders—supercharged calendaring software. Now I want to help others who can learn from our experiences.

You

I need your help. I’ll be adding strategies and best practices that I’ve found useful from my extensive experience hiring and supervising remote workers for a variety of businesses and business models.

I also want to include tips and stories from a variety of businesses and industries so this guide can be helpful to as many people as possible.

How do you find good remote workers? How do you keep up the relationship? What tools do you use to streamline communication and workflow? How do you deal with problems when they arise? What tips do you wish you knew before working with remote staff or freelancers? How do you ensure productive communication and coordination between centralized and remote workers?