Once you have made the decision to engage a new contract employee, your next step is to determine how to best set expectations for their assignment.
Training an “on-demand” workforce generally requires rethinking the delivery of training you may have received or the training you provide to full-time hires. How will these contract employees interact with your full-time team? What is the scope of their responsibilities? How will you set expectations for what needs to be completed and what goals need to be met in the short-term?
Here are some guidelines your team can follow to set expectations for your contractors and help them make the best contribution they can.
Simple Techniques Can Drive Success When Working with Contract Employees
Entrepreneur magazine’s business coach, Marcus Erb, suggests that managers can increase the effectiveness of contract employees by meeting with them in person. If you’re working with a remote contractor, call them directly or set a video meeting with programs like Skype, Google Hangouts or Zoom.
Meeting and setting expectations is important for all contract employees. Everyone is intimidated if they do not know exactly what their job entails. Remember that merely telling a contract employee to “check with” another employee if questions arise, leads to haphazard training and potential disappointment for everyone.
Position Agreements Set Standards That Lead to Excellence
To communicate the expectations, many experts now recommend the development of what can best be termed as a position agreement. Position agreements are designed to clarify an employee’s role. Because of that, they are applicable to any individual in that role and are not specific to only one individual.
To be most effective, position agreements tell employees exactly what results they are expected to achieve, what work tasks are required of them to achieve the result, and what standards will be expected of them as they complete their tasks.
When you write a position agreement, you are writing a document that is designed to propel the employee in the right direction in order to meet the actual goals of the company. You are holding the employee accountable for job performance so that both the employee and the manager can each know what is expected and what each can expect the other to do.
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