External meetings
Freelancer onboarding/kick-off meeting template
Use this template to onboard new freelancers, give them clarity, and help them deliver great work.
About this template
While freelancers aren’t officially part of your company, they’re often an essential player in helping your team meet their goals — so don’t rush their onboarding! Take the time to set up a meeting where they can connect with you and anyone else they’ll be working with on your team.
This meeting agenda walks through goals, tools, processes, and communication to help freelancers get up to speed, ask relevant questions, and deliver great work down the road. Note: It’s best to have this meeting after a freelancer has signed a contract or agreement with you.
Freelancer Onboarding/Kick-Off Meeting Agenda
1. Introductions Introduce relevant team members to the freelancer so they understand their role in the company. Ask the freelancer to give a quick intro to build trust.
2. Goals Review the goals of hiring the freelancer and what KPIs they’ll be meeting or helping your team meet.
Goal 1
Goal 2
Goal 3
3. Tools overview Help the freelancer get set up on the tools they need, providing logins or email invites before the meeting if possible.
Tool 1
Tool 2
Tool 3
4. Processes overview Walk the freelancer through the processes that they’ll be a part of to give them context on their role and their deliverables.
5. Communication Cover the best ways for the freelancer to communicate with you and the team if they have questions or need information — e.g. Slack, email, weekly calls? — and share key contacts.
Project updates:
Questions:
Deliverables:
6. Questions + next steps
When to use this template
Use this template when you’ve hired a new freelancer to do ongoing work for your team, be it copywriting, graphic design, dev, recruiting, PR, or another project. Schedule a kickoff meeting with the freelancer and include any other team members who will be working with them directly (if it’s just you and them, that’s fine too!).
Make sure to do the pre-meeting work of filling out goals and processes, sending relevant documents or videos to review, and inviting the freelancer to any tools or software they may need to do their job.
