Training workers is more than a gig
Many on-demand employers get aid from specialists like Mindflash
Employee training is vital to many companies. But what about those that rely on independent contractors? Companies with farflung freelance workforces still have to educate and inform them, a need that will grow more acute as the gig economy expands.
Palo Alto’s Mindflash seeks to ride that wave, offering a way companies can train thousands of contractors — or a handful — on their phones or desktops, and on a flexible schedule.
When it released its online training systems six years ago, Mindflash initially focused on internal employees. But then it spotted an opportunity in training gig workers.
“How on earth does a company effectively source, evaluate, hire and on-board millions of people?” said CEO Donna Wells. “And after that, all these contractors go out and represent its brand on a dayto-day basis. The only way is through advanced technology.”
But contractor training must walk a fine line. If it’s heavy-handed, a company risks giving contractors ammunition to claim that they should be treated as employees, which means paying benefits, taxes and other costs. The industry has been roiled for several years by lawsuits against on-demand com-
panies like Uber, Postmates and Handy in which gig workers seek the protections and rights of employees. All the cases are still pending, although Lyft is close to a $27 million settlement that would leave its drivers as independent contractors.
“My recommendation (to companies using independent contractors) is to pare down (training) materials to the minimum necessary,” said Margaret Grover, an Oakland labor lawyer who has represented both employers and employees. “Anything that is called training, or is mandatory, is an indicator that the business has control over the worker, and therefore that the relationship is that of employer/employee rather than independent contractor.”
The general rule is that the more control companies exert over workers, the more likely they are to be considered employees, said Steve Hirschfeld, a San Francisco lawyer who represents management in labor cases. “If you do a significant amount of job training, teaching people the skills they need to accomplish the work, then you’re skating on thin ice, and they start looking more like employees than contractors,” he said. “If the training is more of an orientation on how to do business with the company, and certain processes and procedures it expects, then I don’t see a problem.”
Underscoring that tension, Belmont’s Zum, a ride-service company for kids, initially spoke enthusiastically with The Chronicle about its use of Mindflash to train its drivers, who double as child care providers. But it abruptly shut down a scheduled photo shoot. CEO Ritu Narayan told a photographer that the company had been advised to pull out of the story. She subsequently claimed in an email that Zum was just beta-testing the product.
Earlier she said that Zum has been using Mindflash for six months, sending new drivers short lessons on topics such as how to greet passengers, what situations may arise while driving and how drivers can keep their cars clean and safe. It paid $800 a month for the service, she said.
Mindflash fit Zum’s requirements of an easyto-use service that allowed video uploads and collecting feedback from trainees. “We didn’t want it to be a one-way process,” Narayan said. “We wanted to manage the workflow, to know who had and hadn’t completed the training, to judge that they understood the content.”
On the question of whether training might jeopardize the drivers’ independent contractor status, she said: “It is not an instructional video but more of a guideline. It’s more about, what are the good practices, what works well, what do customers like and not like.” Zum shied away from step-by-step directives, she said. “If you say in a training, ‘This is how you’re supposed to do that job,’ then you are walking the line between independent contractors and employees,” she said.
San Francisco food delivery service DoorDash, which is being sued by some drivers claiming employee status, said it provides training both in person and through its online system with updates for new features such as its recent addition of alcohol delivery. “We think of it as providing information to the independent contractors so they can be successful in doing their job,” said Christopher Payne, chief operating officer.
Mindflash said its 1,100 client companies have 500,000 users in 177 countries. They include Uber’s operations in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.
“The training they do isn’t ‘nice to have,’ it is ‘must have,’ ” Wells said. “With Uber, drivers are off the road until they can demonstrate and Uber HQ can get the real-time reporting to indicate that the driver has successfully passed the course. The speed at which gig economy companies are moving doesn’t allow them to create friction or added steps for their contractors. It’s got to be seamless.”
Mindflash is far from the only company with training tools, of course. Rivals such as Talent LMS, Absorb LMS and DigitalChalk also help companies train people online. Cornerstore, Saba and SumTotal are more oriented toward internal training. All increasingly must add sophisticated features for interactivity and video, as the entertainment industry keeps setting a higher bar for what people expect.
Like most online training systems, Mindflash charges for subscriptions. It is $600 a month for up to 500 active trainees and 10 administrators, or $1,200 a month for up to 1,000 trainees and 50 administrators. Companies with more than 1,000 active trainees get custom pricing.
Iggbo, a Virginia company that provides phlebotomists to doctors’ offices, hospitals, labs and homes, used to rely on Web seminars to educate its 8,000 on-call workers. By switching to Mindflash for its orientation, it can more rapidly expand into new markets, said CEO Nuno Valentine. “With a click we can send new workers training from a lab that wants to mobilize folks in that area,” he said. “In the medical field, there are lots of workflows and processes; the complexity goes through the roof. Tools like this are critical in our ability to manage the business and ensure compliance” with local laws.
Oakland attorney Grover said that even training on compliance is best spelled out in written agreements. A contract might specify the regulations that a contractor is expected to follow along with a company Web address where they can be found.
San Francisco’s Juma Ventures is a national nonprofit that hires low-income teenagers as concession workers at sports facilities and entertainment venues. It also offers them financial education and support to help them graduate from high school and continue on to higher education. It has been using Mindflash for about three years to disseminate around 15 hours of training to new participants, in addition to some in-person trainings.
“The content is things like basic work fundamentals, which include professionalism, appearance, teamwork and problem solving; and other core business skills such as selling, customer service and product information,” said Juma CEO Marc Spencer. “Mindflash is a good tool for us because it is mobile-acceptable, and our young people need flexibility about where and when they do the training. It lets them learn at their own pace. The greatest value for us is having a way to track the skills, abilities and competencies of our youth employees, which then lets us home in on areas where they need further development.”