Introduction

If you run an agency, your business model is simple: you sell time.

Every hour your team spends working on a client project is revenue. Every hour they spend "getting up to speed" is a cost.

When you hire a freelancer or contractor for a 3-month project, you need them billable yesterday. But in most agencies, the reality is very different.

The "Day 1" Reality Check

Let’s look at the typical first 48 hours of a new contractor:

• Hour 0-4: Waiting for IT to set up their email.
• Hour 5-8: Reading a 40-page Employee Handbook PDF (which they skim).
• Hour 9-12: "Shadowing" a senior team member to understand how you file documents or use Slack.
• Hour 13-16: Asking questions on Teams because they didn't really understand the handbook.

By the end of Day 2, you have paid for 16 hours of their time, plus 4 hours of your senior team's time to support them.

Total cost: ~£1,500 (assuming £500/day rates).Total billable output: £0.

This is the "Onboarding Tax." And if you hire 10 freelancers a year, it's costing you £15,000 in lost margin.

There is a faster way

What if that contractor arrived on Day 1 already trained?

Imagine sending them a link 24 hours before they start.

1. They read your core policies (Remote Work, Data Security, Slack Etiquette).
2. They take a 5-minute interactive quiz that proves they actually understood the rules.
3. They sign the NDA digitally.

They walk in on Monday morning (or log in remotely) and they don't need to ask "Where do I save this file?". They already know.

From "Shadowing" to "Doing"

This isn't just about saving admin time; it's about protecting your margins.

At Enlytning, we built "Template Packs" specifically for agencies. You can take our standard SME Starter Pack, hydrate it with your specific rules (e.g., "We use Trello, not Jira"), and deploy it to a new starter in minutes.

Stop paying expensive talent to read PDFs. Get them billable on Day 1.