Why Outsourcing Training Sometimes Fails – And How to Avoid It

Imagine this: You’ve been tasked with creating training materials for your department, team, or perhaps the entire company. You have little experience developing training, so you ask your leadership for resources to help. They give you the green light to hire a contractor rather than a full-time head.

When you think about this situation, what goes through your mind? Perhaps you’re excited – you’re getting help, regardless of where it’s coming from! But it would be entirely understandable if, instead, this thought makes you nervous.

Hiring is a difficult beast no matter how you do it. You never know if you’re going to find a great talent or a great headache. And that’s when it’s an internal role, when you can monitor their work in person, see how they’re spending their time, and meet with them regularly to discuss progress.

Hiring a contractor or studio might make you feel a lot less comfortable. On the one hand, if performance is poor, you can simply break the contract and go your separate ways. But on the other hand, you might walk away with nothing to show for their time on your team.

So, if you're outsourcing training development to a studio or contractor, what can you do to ensure a favorable outcome for your team and your organization’s goals?

This is where it can get tricky, but I’m here to help! In this article, we’ll discuss:

• What Can Go Wrong – Where Outsourcing Fails

• What You Can Do to Help Outsourcing Succeed

• What Assurances You Have When Partnering with Phoenix Learning Solutions

Let's dive in!

WHAT CAN GO WRONG – WHERE OUTSOURCING FAILS

If you’ve never outsourced training before, let me paint you a picture of what can go wrong from one of my own painful experiences:

While working as a salaried employee, my team was shorthanded for a few months while my coworker was on maternity leave. In the interim, we were permitted to hire a contractor to help with a massive, year-long project we were working on.

For this project, the storyboards for all twelve courses of the program had been written. Three of the twelve courses had been developed. The person coming into the role would be tasked with developing the fifth course (we'd already started the fourth) using the template, layout, and content we’d already established. This project was about as straightforward as it gets.

We spent a couple weeks looking through portfolios and resumes, talking with potential candidates, and seeking out our best options. I’ll share our budget openly because it’s important later: We were allowed to spend up to $50 per hour for a period of up to two months. Given our budget, we had somewhat limited options but eventually went with a person who seemed to be a good fit and was available to start immediately. For the sake of privacy, I won’t use his real name, but we’ll call him John.

On paper, John was the right fit. He was within our budget – $40 per hour, though in hindsight, we learned this should’ve been a red flag. We thought we were saving the company money but ended up costing them much more (more on this soon). John had a Masters in Instructional Design and several years of corporate ID experience. He was currently in a salaried position at a popular Fortune 500 company and was taking on contract work on the side, which we were fine with. If anything, the fact that he was currently in a fairly lucrative position only bolstered him for us. Couple this with the fact that we were asking him to do a simple and straightforward task, and this project was on track to go as smoothly as could be.

But things went immediately south upon bringing him on board. He had no eye for design, so much so that he couldn’t follow the established template we gave him. He was difficult to contact and slow to communicate. At the beginning, he made excuses for not wanting to showcase his work, which we learned later was because he didn’t even start the project for the first two weeks despite claiming 70 hours of pay during that time. After three weeks, he finally presented four partially finished slides, none of which were even a little bit usable. We ended the contract with him, threw out his mess of a project file, and I myself had to rebuild the entire course.

John was the right candidate on paper. So, what went wrong?

Here's what we learned:

• Budget: Plain and simple, quality candidates cost money. It’s an unfortunate truth, especially in our economy and with organizations restricting spending more and more. Had we pushed for a larger budget, we could’ve hired someone who could perform instead of spending money on John’s work that we ultimately couldn’t even use.

• Communication: It was tough to know this at first, but John was a poor communicator. Before hiring him, we should’ve gotten a better gauge for how responsive he would be. We assumed someone working for a Fortune 500 and doing contracting on the side would have communication down pat. Take it from us: Never, ever assume anything, whether hiring internally or externally.

• Skill: While John didn’t technically lie to us, we found out later that his role at this Fortune 500 wasn’t to build content from scratch. He simply managed and updated existing content. While he had the title of Instructional Designer at this company, the project we gave him was simply outside his skillset.

• Vendor Management: My manager was too busy to properly manage John. He should have insisted on seeing work earlier, at least weekly. I’m not throwing him under the bus – my manager has admitted this one himself. Too much time went by between hiring John and seeing his work output for us to course correct on time.

• Theory vs. Reality: Many people understand the theory of instructional design but not how to execute it. When we interviewed John, he knew most of the right things to say, but when faced with real work, he didn’t know how to get that work onto the page. Despite his resume, he lacked real-world experience.

• Reviews: This ties into the budget issue – we weren’t seeking high-quality IDs – but John had the best reviews of everyone we were considering. While that might seem like enough, I’ve since realized that many people don’t write unfavorable reviews. My manager is one of those people. After ending the contract with John, my manager simply opted out of leaving a review. While it was a kind way to end a bad situation, it also makes me wonder how many others worked with John and had poor experiences.

The bottom line of external hiring of any kind is this: You have to be prepared and able to monitor behavior and work output throughout the project, or at least until trust is fully established. Otherwise, you might end up like us – out thousands of dollars and over a month of time (including the hiring process) and at the end of it all, still having to complete the work yourself.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP OUTSOURCING SUCCEED

So, what can you do to avoid what happened to us? Even if a person or studio looks good on paper, how can you feel assured that you’re going to get the quality of work you’re paying for?

Depending on who you hire, this might require some effort. Understanding this is half the battle. If you can approach an external hire similar to how you would approach an internal hire, you’ll find much more success than we did.

The most important thing you can do is this: monitor work output up front. At almost any point in the project, you should be able to answer these questions:

• How much work has the contractor completed so far?

• What’s the quality of the work?

• Does the contractor need feedback or course correction? (By the way, this should happen as soon as possible to mitigate rework, which could save you thousands of dollars.)

• Has the contractor been responsive thus far?

• Is the contractor likely working the hours they claim? (Not necessarily relevant if you hire a contractor or studio by the project versus by the hour.)

• Do we want to continue this contract? Is it still serving the organization and the project?

You might be reading this and thinking, Of course I’m going to do these things – they’re no-brainers.

But consider the reason for bringing on an external hire in the first place. In most cases, you and/or your team are underwater. You’re looking to offload a project onto someone else. And external hiring usually comes with the belief that the person coming in can be up and running immediately with little to no onboarding time. So, it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming whoever you hire will be functional on their own with little oversight.

The next most important thing you can do is advocate for the largest budget you can. And look, I get what it sounds like that I included this statement in this article, but the truth is, you truly do get what you pay for. Presumably, you don’t want the headache of micromanaging an external hire – or any hire, for that matter. You want professionalism, strong ID skills, and quality output. Frankly, hiring someone with the skillset to do the work right costs money.

According to Learnexus, in 2024, the rate for a mid-level ID – someone with 3-7 years of experience – is $60-100 per hour. I can tell you from my own experience in my career, by year 7, I was only just starting to handle my own projects end-to-end. I maybe could’ve come into a company as a contractor with little to no onboarding and handled an easy project on my own without guidance, but I also probably would’ve made a lot of mistakes. Now, compare this to my story earlier of hiring John at $40 per hour, and you can see right away one of the areas we messed up big time.

By contrast, hiring a senior ID with 7-10+ years of experience costs around $100-150 per hour. This is the person who can walk onto your team and take charge of a project with minimal to no oversight on your end.

If you’re balking at the price right now, let me ease your mind a bit. Remember that contractors in any field charge more than salaried employees because the organization doesn’t have to pay this person’s benefits, PTO, payroll taxes, or do any form of initial training for them. Contractors take on a lot of risk as a result. But again, how effective this person will be is experience-dependent and even more reason to spring for someone who costs more – in order to cost your organization less in the long run and ensure the project is done right.

If this is making you wonder whether an internal hire wouldn't be the right choice instead, check out my article, In-House Trainer vs. Outsourced Instructional Designer - Which is Right for Your Business?

The third most important thing is to know at least the basics of what you want before you search for a contractor.

This is the lowest priority of my three tips because even in this case, you can still end up with someone who doesn’t know how to do the work, as in our scenario.

But that said, it is still a vital part of what makes a contractor successful. Not only does it help you choose the right person in the first place, it also allows you to set the guidelines and specifics of the project up front so the contractor can quickly start the work and meet your expectations.

WHAT ASSURANCES YOU HAVE WHEN PARTNERING WITH PHOENIX LEARNING SOLUTIONS

One of my biggest goals when starting Phoenix Learning Solutions was to take as much of the effort off my clients’ shoulders as possible. All the tasks we talked about earlier regarding communication and vendor management shouldn’t be on you. I strongly believe effortlessness and efficiency are part of what you pay for when you hire a studio, not just the work output itself.

A lot of the Phoenix project structure comes from what I learned from my own disastrous experiences with contract hires. Unfortunately, the situation with John is only one of three such experiences that I’ve personally dealt with so far through my career. Each one, while painful, helped shape this studio and the way we approach projects.

Here’s what we guarantee if you work with Phoenix Learning Solutions:

• 12 Years of Corporate ID Experience: Remember a bit ago when we talked about different levels of instructional designers? As the owner and founder of Phoenix Learning Solutions, I’ve been working as a corporate ID for 12 years from the time of writing this article, putting me well within senior designer territory. I’ve learned a lot in those years and have a strong skillset and a lot of knowledge to show for it.

• Up and Running Immediately: We don’t need to be onboarded to your team or require any training. We’ll ask you questions to understand your organization, goals, learner constraints, and more. Our questions ensure we can start the project quickly and efficiently.

• Frequent and Clear Communication: You’ll never wonder whether we’re ghosting you or if you made the right choice in hiring us. We respond to any email within 24 hours, and if for some reason we’re going to be unreachable for a time, you’ll know why and when you can expect our return. We always answer questions to the best of our ability and operate with transparency and integrity.

• Regular Check-Ins with Work Attached: Each week, you receive an email detailing the status of the project, the step of work currently being completed, any concerns or risks we have, and a link to view work completed thus far. While you aren’t required to review work each week, you can always see where the work stands and have peace of mind that it’s being completed on time and at the quality you expect.

• High-Quality Work Output: We take pride in creating beautiful, clear, vibrant training materials that help learners stay engaged, remember what they learned, and apply new knowledge and skills in the workplace. After all, 12 years of experience has given us a lot of time to learn our trade! Take a look at our Portfolio for some examples!

• Operational Training Knowledge: Creating beautiful, clean training modules is a massively important part of the job. But none of that matters if the training doesn’t work for your organization, audience, or industry. We understand how to create training that actually works. It doesn’t just look pretty – it’s highly functional, which is honestly the most important part.

We try to take as much work off your plate as possible so you can focus on doing what you do in your day-to-day. While there are some things we ask of you during the project, like being available to answer questions and provide feedback on our work, we make the process as smooth and effortless for you as we can.

If you want to learn more about how we work and what we ask of you in return, visit our How We Work page.

TO WRAP IT UP

Hiring a contractor or studio can be a bit of a gamble. But the rewards can greatly outweigh the risks if you go with the right person.

Whether you choose Phoenix Learning Solutions or someone else to develop your next training project, we hope you take the advice in this article so you can have success with whomever you choose! At the end of the day, we want to see more high-quality training in the workplace, whether it comes from us or someone else.

But if you think you're ready to work with Phoenix Learning Solutions, contact us today!