Quick Summary:
Many learning and development teams use a mix of full-time and contract instructional designers because their workload and skill needs change throughout the year. Full-time instructional designers provide continuity, institutional knowledge, and ongoing support, while contract instructional designers give teams flexible capacity and access to specialized expertise when projects, deadlines, or priorities require it.
For many L&D leaders, the question isn’t really whether contract or full-time instructional designers are better. They serve different purposes.
A full-time instructional designer may be exactly what an organization needs to support ongoing programs, understand the business, and build long-term relationships with stakeholders. At the same time, that same organization may need three additional instructional designers for a major initiative, an instructional designer with specialized expertise for a particular project, or extra capacity for six months.
That’s why many L&D teams intentionally use both.
What Do Full-Time Instructional Designers
Bring to an L&D Team?
Full-time instructional designers provide something that’s difficult to replicate: continuity.
Over time, they develop a deep understanding of the organization’s business, culture, learners, systems, stakeholders, and internal processes. They know which subject matter experts need extra guidance, how decisions get made, what has been tried before, and where to find information that may never appear in a project brief.
That institutional knowledge can make them particularly valuable for ongoing learning programs and strategic initiatives.
Full-time instructional designers can also build long-term relationships throughout the organization. When an operations leader or HR business partner has a performance problem, an established internal instructional designer may already understand enough about the business to begin asking the right questions.
For organizations with a steady and predictable volume of instructional design work, maintaining full-time instructional design expertise makes sense.
The challenge is that L&D workloads are rarely steady or predictable.
Why Isn't a Full-Time Team Always Enough?
L&D teams are often staffed for their typical workload. It works fine during steady times. Then something changes.
The organization launches a new product. A system implementation requires training for thousands of employees. Compliance requirements change. A merger creates an urgent onboarding need. Leadership decides to redesign a major curriculum. Several business units request help at the same time.
Suddenly, a team that was appropriately staffed three months ago has more projects than people.
Hiring additional full-time employees may not make sense if the increased workload is temporary. Even when another permanent position is justified, recruiting and onboarding someone can take longer than the project allows.
This is where contract instructional designers can provide another layer of capacity.
5 Reasons to Hire an Instructional Design Consultant
How Do Contract Instructional Designers
Help Manage Changing Workloads?
Instructional design work often arrives in waves.
An organization may have relatively manageable demand for several months and then suddenly face multiple high-priority projects with overlapping deadlines. Building a permanent team large enough to handle every possible peak can leave the organization overstaffed during slower periods.
Instructional design contractors allow L&D leaders to expand and contract their teams as workload changes.
A consultant might join the team for a three-month curriculum redesign, a six-month system rollout, or a year-long enterprise initiative. When the work is completed, the engagement ends without requiring the organization to maintain that additional headcount indefinitely.
That flexibility can be particularly useful when the scope or duration of future work is uncertain.
Can Instructional Design Consultants
Fill Specialized Skill Gaps?
Instructional design work often arrives in waves.
An organization may have relatively manageable demand for several months and then suddenly face multiple high-priority projects with overlapping deadlines. Building a permanent team large enough to handle every possible peak can leave the organization overstaffed during slower periods.
Instructional design contractors allow L&D leaders to expand and contract their teams as workload changes.
A consultant might join the team for a three-month curriculum redesign, a six-month system rollout, or a year-long enterprise initiative. When the work is completed, the engagement ends without requiring the organization to maintain that additional headcount indefinitely.
That flexibility can be particularly useful when the scope or duration of future work is uncertain.
Can Instructional Design Consultants
Fill Specialized Skill Gaps?
Capacity isn’t the only reason organizations use consultants. Sometimes an L&D team has enough people but doesn’t have the specific expertise a project requires.
For example, an internal team may be highly experienced in instructor-led training but need someone with extensive eLearning development experience. Another team may need an instructional designer who understands sales enablement, software training, leadership development, accessibility, performance consulting, or a particular authoring tool.
In these situations, an Instructional Design Consultant can supplement the expertise already on the team. The organization doesn’t necessarily need that specialized skill set forever. It needs it for this project.
Bringing in an experienced consultant can also allow internal instructional designers to stay focused on the work where their organizational knowledge and relationships provide the most value.
Does Using Consultants Mean
Outsourcing Instructional Design?
Not necessarily. Many organizations don’t hand an entire project or learning function to an outside company. Instead, they use consultants as an extension of their internal team.
A contract instructional designer may attend the same project meetings, work with the same SMEs, use the organization’s templates and tools, and collaborate directly with full-time instructional designers.
The difference is primarily how that resource is engaged.
This model can be especially effective when the internal team retains strategic ownership while consultants provide additional capacity or specialized expertise.
For example, a full-time instructional designer might lead the overall learning strategy and manage stakeholder relationships while contract instructional designers conduct analysis, develop storyboards, build eLearning, create facilitator materials, or support other defined portions of the initiative.
When Does a Blended
Instructional Design Team Make Sense?
A combination of full-time and contract instructional designers can work particularly well when an organization has a stable base of ongoing work plus periods of higher demand.
Think of the full-time team as the foundation. They maintain organizational knowledge, relationships, standards, and long-term priorities. Consultants provide elasticity around that foundation.
An L&D leader may choose to hire an instructional designer on a contract basis when:
- A major project temporarily exceeds the internal team’s capacity.
- Multiple projects have overlapping deadlines.
- A specialized skill is needed that the internal team doesn’t have.
- An employee is on extended leave.
- A position is open, but work can’t wait for the hiring process.
- The organization is uncertain whether increased demand will continue.
- A large rollout requires more development resources for a defined period.
- Internal employees need to stay focused on strategic or business-critical work.
The right mix can change from year to year and sometimes from quarter to quarter.
Working Successfully with Contract L&D Professionals
What Are the Advantages of Working with
an Instructional Design Consulting Company?
Organizations can find independent consultants directly, but working with an instructional design consulting company like TrainingPros can make the process easier when speed and fit matter.
An experienced instructional design company should understand the differences among instructional design roles and be able to evaluate consultants based on the actual work required. Someone who is excellent at designing complex instructor-led learning may not be the right person to build a highly interactive eLearning program, even though both professionals are instructional designers.
The best instructional design consultants aren’t simply the people with the longest resumes. They’re the people whose experience, skills, working style, and availability align with the project.
A company specializing in instructional design consulting services may also have an established network of consultants who have already been screened. In some cases, the company has worked with those consultants previously and has direct feedback about how they performed on actual client engagements. That gives an L&D leader information that can be difficult to uncover through a resume and interview alone.
How Should L&D Leaders Decide Between
Contract and Full-Time Instructional Designers?
Start with the nature of the need rather than the employment model. If the organization has consistent, long-term work that requires deep institutional knowledge, adding a full-time instructional designer may be the better choice.
If the need is project-based, temporary, specialized, or difficult to predict, an Instructional Design Consultant may make more sense.
And sometimes the answer is both.
A blended staffing strategy allows L&D leaders to build a strong internal team without expecting that team to contain every possible skill or absorb every possible increase in demand.
Why Are Blended L&D Teams Becoming
a Practical Staffing Strategy?
L&D leaders are constantly balancing priorities, budgets, timelines, and changing business needs. Building an instructional design team doesn’t have to mean choosing exclusively between employees and consultants.
Full-time instructional designers provide continuity and organizational knowledge. Instructional Design Consultants provide flexibility, capacity, and specialized expertise.
Together, they can give an L&D organization a more adaptable way to respond when priorities change.
Instead of staffing for the highest workload the team might ever encounter, organizations can maintain the internal expertise they need every day and add experienced consultants when the work calls for them.
What to Read Next:
Still deciding if you need a contract instructional designer?
These articles continue the conversation about whether or not you need a contract instructional designer.
Ready to Work with Us?
Does your L&D team have more projects than people?
Many organizations in this position turn to contract instructional designers to scale training without overloading internal teams. If you’re exploring options or comparing eLearning development companies, you should learn more about how organizations design and scale these solutions.
TrainingPros is a learning and development company that connects organizations with experienced instructional designers, eLearning developers, and performance consultants. We’ve been named a Top 20 Staffing Company by Training Industry and a Champion of Learning by the Association for Talent Development (ATD), recognition that reflects our commitment to delivering high-quality, tailored learning solutions.
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If your learning initiatives require additional support, whether for a single project or a large-scale rollout, our relationship managers can help you find the right expertise quickly and confidently.
When you have more projects than people™, let TrainingPros find the right consultant to start your project with confidence.
Frequently Asked Questions About
Contract Instructional Designers
Should I hire a full-time or contract instructional designer?
It depends on the nature and duration of the work. Full-time instructional designers are often a good choice for steady, ongoing needs that benefit from deep organizational knowledge. Contract instructional designers can be a better fit for temporary workload increases, defined projects, specialized expertise, or uncertain future demand.
What is the difference between an instructional design consultant and a full-time instructional designer?
Both may perform similar instructional design work. The primary difference is how they are engaged. A full-time instructional designer is a permanent employee, while an instructional design consultant typically works with the organization for a defined project or period of time.
Can contract instructional designers work alongside an internal L&D team?
Yes. Many contract instructional designers work as extensions of internal L&D teams. They may collaborate with full-time instructional designers, subject matter experts, project managers, facilitators, and business stakeholders while following the organization’s existing processes and standards.
Why would an organization use contract instructional designers if it already has an internal team?
Organizations often bring in consultants when the internal team is at capacity, a project requires specialized expertise, several deadlines overlap, or additional resources are needed temporarily. Consultants can add capacity without requiring the organization to permanently increase headcount.
What should I look for when hiring an instructional design consultant?
Look for experience that closely matches the project’s needs, including the learning modality, audience, industry when relevant, tools, complexity, and expected deliverables. Portfolio quality and the consultant’s ability to work effectively with SMEs and stakeholders are also important considerations.
What do instructional design consulting companies do?
Instructional design consulting companies connect organizations with instructional design professionals who can support specific projects or temporary staffing needs. Depending on the company, they may recruit, screen, match, onboard, and manage consultants throughout the engagement.
