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Independent Contractor Onboarding

Rationale Currently there is a move to use more independent contractors (ICs) on curriculum projects in order to remain agile. Internal teams will oversee the work of multiple external teams of vendors and independent contractors, increasing production capabilities. Using independent contractors will also allow the company to save money on reduced need for office space, equipment, as well as in employee benefits (FreshBooks Blog, 2019). Because ICs are only needed for certain phases of the work, it makes sense to avoid carrying a larger in-house team that would be idle for months at a time (Nolo, 2012).

However, current onboarding practices are lacking. While hiring ICs has become commonplace, there is no uniform onboarding and training course that we can currently offer. This lack of uniformity and course design has led to a messy range of training practices with onboarding meetings that range from under an hour to upwards of two hours covering a wide variety of training topics. This has resulted in high turnover rates of ICs as well as projects falling behind schedule almost immediately from the kick-off meeting. This is largely due to IC confusion and frustration with lack clarity.

Many of the current onboarding training meetings overload ICs with too much detail about internal teams’ work and do not focus on just-in-time training for what they will actually need to know in order to complete assignments. For example, one meeting spent the first hour with the project manager, curriculum lead, content editing lead, assessment lead, and accessibility lead each taking time to introduce themselves and how their internal work takes place. This information does not provide context or benefit the IC in anyway.

Instead of each internal team creating an ad hoc onboarding training, we will be designing a standardized version that can be implemented by each team with minor adjustments, as needed. This will reduce IC turnover, increase IC confidence, produce a better product, and help teams to meet deadlines. By offering a standardized onboarding training, we will also be able to measure outcomes and be able to improve the training as needed. For example, if there is IC turnover or if assignments are coming in late, we will be able to figure out what is lacking and adjust the training to better meet IC needs.

This training will consist of a brief introduction to each part of the internal team and their role in the project, a demonstration of how to access the content management system (CMS), a demonstration for how to access Smartsheet for contractor assignments, as well as a brief overview of all the relevant checklists and rubrics for writers and editors. Finally, we will go over how to create and submit invoices once work has been completed and approved. There will be about five minutes set aside for the facilitator to discuss any particulars or nuances of the specific project that the ICs will be working on. The entire training should take approximately one hour and will serve an audience of up to twenty independent contractors.