is training a client's new hire out of scope?

They sit on the same spectrum but at different ends, and the difference is intent. A handoff walkthrough orients the client to the work you delivered: here's the structure, here's where the files are, here's how the pieces fit. Its goal is to make your deliverable usable, which is reasonably part of delivering it. Training has a different goal — to make a specific person independently capable of doing what you do, so they can operate, extend, or replace your work without you. That's a transfer of skill, not a tour of an output, and it scales with how capable the client wants the person to become. A walkthrough is bounded by the work; training is bounded only by how much the trainee needs to learn, which is potentially endless. So you give the walkthrough freely as closeout and treat training as the separate, pricier service it actually is.

It's a bigger deal than it sounds, because open-ended availability is one of the most expensive things you can give away. 'Answer questions as they come up' has no end date, no hour cap, and no defined topic — it's a standing call on your attention that can run for months and interrupt your other work every time a notification lands. Framed as a favor, it's actually an informal retainer, except unpaid and uncapped. The fix isn't to refuse to ever help; it's to give the open-endedness a shape. Offer a bounded support window — 'I'll answer questions for two weeks after handoff' — or a paid support retainer if they want ongoing access. A leave-behind doc absorbs most of the questions anyway. The point is to convert an infinite, invisible obligation into a finite, visible one before it quietly colonizes your calendar.

Then a short handoff is still reasonable to include as good practice — orienting the client to what you delivered is part of delivering it well, and refusing would be needlessly rigid. But the absence of a training clause cuts against the client, not you: if onboarding their staff isn't named anywhere in the agreement, it isn't part of what you were paid for, and you're under no obligation to provide it for free. Treat the gap as a lesson for next time rather than something to absorb now. Do the closeout walkthrough, name training as a separate service if they want it, and add an explicit line to your next contract clarifying that staff onboarding is out of scope unless purchased. The missing clause is exactly why the conversation feels awkward — fill it going forward so you're not negotiating from memory.

Price it as a defined package, not an open tap. Decide the goal — what the trainee should be able to do at the end — then scope the hours to reach it and quote a fixed fee for that block: a single two-hour session, or a three-session onboarding package, with an explicit list of what it covers. Resist 'I'll just be available,' which prices to infinity and invites endless follow-up. Training often warrants a premium over your production rate because it's a different and more draining skill than making the work; you're performing, explaining, and adapting to someone else's pace in real time. If the client wants ongoing access beyond the package, that's a retainer with its own number. The discipline is the same as with any scope: give the obligation visible edges, and make the meter something both sides can see.

You draw it by being warm about the person and firm about the structure. Don't blame the new hire, who's just trying to learn their job; redirect the channel instead. Something like: 'Glad to help Priya get up to speed — to keep it organized, let's set up one proper onboarding session rather than ad-hoc calls, and I'll put together a short guide she can reference after.' That gives her a real path to competence while reclaiming your calendar from drip-fed interruptions. If the calls are genuinely closeout questions about your deliverable, a bounded support window covers them. If they're 'teach me your craft' questions, that's a training engagement, and naming it as one isn't cold — it's honest. The coldness people fear comes from saying no; structure lets you say yes to a shape instead, which almost always lands better.

It changes how it feels, not whether it's in scope. Whether or not training the new hire eventually reduces your role, the work of teaching them is still a separate service outside your deliverable, and you're entitled to scope and price it accordingly. That said, you don't have to enthusiastically train your own replacement for free, and the scope analysis happens to protect you here: by treating training as a distinct paid engagement, you neither give away your expertise for nothing nor pick a fight about job security you can't win. If the client genuinely wants to bring the function in-house, you can decide whether to support that transition as a paid handoff or to bow out gracefully. Either way, the deliverable you were hired for is one thing and teaching someone to replicate it is another — let the boundary, not the anxiety, drive your answer.