Excellence model - Execution

If you have been able to successfully find, quality assure and onboard a great contractor that matches the requirements, you have the right foundation for getting maximum value in the execution phase.

A key question is whether you from a management perspective should treat your external contractors differently than your permanent employees, and the answer is dependent on the nature of the contractor’s role. 

For roles that are primarily execution and where the contractor becomes an integrated part of your team, you should minimize the difference. This will improve collaboration and therefore also productivity. If the contractor is an expert in his field, you have a great chance of upgrading the competencies of your permanent employees by encouraging knowledge sharing and coaching from the contractor.

For contractor roles that are more strategic and consultative in their nature, there can be a great advantage in keeping a distance, so an objective outside-in perspective is kept by the contractor throughout the project.

In the execution phase, you must ensure to measure the quality of each individual contractor, and this has to be kept simple and easy. If it is too complex and time consuming to measure quality, you risk that it is not done at all. For maximum simplicity, we recommend a simple 1-5 grading of satisfaction with the contractor by the direct manager.

Measuring quality has both an immediate and a long-term purpose.

The immediate purpose is that it provides a mechanism for revealing improvement potential. You simply should not accept bad or mediocre contractors in your organisation. If there is not high satisfaction, action must be taken to improve the situation by addressing the issues or simply by taking the consequence and replacing the contractor.

The long-term purpose is to be able to take data-driven actions on your use of the external workforce. By aggregating quality measurement on vendor level and comparing to other parameters like price or speed of delivery, you will have a much stronger insight into the true value of different vendors, and this should guide your future sourcing and vendor priorities.