One of the most frustrating areas of my business in the last 2 years has certainly been the hiring and keeping of contractors. Before you get the wrong idea, I am not difficult to work for 
. The reasons for leaving are very typical for independent contractors/freelancers. Family issues, health and moving on to other things are the biggest reasons. Sometimes, there’s plain irresponsibility. People just fall off the face of the earth. Sadly, it happens way too often and in my case, they leave while a project is mid way.
Every time this happens, I have to start from the beginning. Explaining the objectives, the details of a project, the goals, where we are, where I want to go from here. They have questions. Stuff that you have perhaps gone over before in different threads of conversation and will have to dig up from your email archives or elsewhere. Getting someone up to speed is extremely time consuming. Time you could better spend on marketing and other income producing tasks.
People say when you outsource, you train once and have others do the job over and over. It is harder the first time and just think. You’ll never have to do the job again after the initial training. That is true, if they stay with you. When they leave, you’ll have to do the training again. And again. You trade a set of problems for another.
How do businesses in high turnover industries do it? They use a combination of trainers and systems. You get someone else who has already created the training to train your assistants for you. Since the material is ready at hand, you do not need to take time off your own schedule. If questions abound, the trainers will help them through it. If they leave, send your new assistant to complete the training.
You also make sure you have systems set in place so all people need to do after coming back from training is to implement the systems using their new skills. When they stay with you, send them to more training to update or upgrade their skills. Like hiring employees, this boosts the chances of a freelancer staying with you.
Not all projects require full training. Sometimes like in my example above, all I needed was a good system – which I’ve since collected and sorted out. So if you find someone who can train as well as provide system frameworks for you and your assistants that would be so much sweeter.
That is the goal we are working towards at TechBasedTraining. We began with a strong focus on bite-sized, technical training that can be quickly implemented. As time went by we also realized the importance of providing basic systems. Many of the training and packages are created with that idea in mind. In the Pro members’ area, there are also checklists for smaller tasks that fall inside a system. This way, a the business owner can focus on the what to do’s even when their contractor or staff leaves for greener pastures.
photo credit: julianlimjl
