Contract labor and reality.
I’d like to talk a little bit about non-employee project labor – consultants or contractors. I was am IT consultant and contractor for many years before I hired in house at a former customer. Larger projects or undertakings that require certain expertise require services typically from outside. What I specifically want to address today is how to bring them into the fold. In many organizations, they are kept at arms length, treated well by some, very differently. Unless they specifically need to be different (like in the case of management consultants, where differentiation is the point), project contractors should be, for most intents and purposes, treated as employees. Yes – they are not employees and there are key differences (frequently hourly vs a salaried employee, works for another company, your company’s legal staff is worried about their eventual lawsuit claiming to be an employee and suing for back pay or benefits), but motivationally, they are an employee and a stakehold...