How To Properly Offboard Your Contractors
BLOG
How To Properly Offboard Your Contractors
Learn how to offboard contractors to maintain your employer's reputation. Enterprise Solutions CEO, Matthew Dickason, shares the latest advice for businesses using contractors.
Ending your time with a contractor: Key Insights
- Contractor offboarding is a leaky bucket of intellectual property for many businesses
- Many organisations have a thorough offboarding princess of full-time employees but fail to offboard contractors properly
- Structured communication and feedback can help businesses recover as much information as possible
- Hays temporary recruitment experts can help you build an offboarding process that recovers assets and saves you time and money
Read on to learn the pitfalls of contractor offboarding and how to create a contractor offboarding checklist.
Discuss your contractor management with one of our experts by emailing Hays on our contact page. You can also read about our contractor employer services here.
Organisations lose precious resources to poor contractor offboarding
Organisations use contractors to complete specific work or to assist with a large project. Though their time at a company is often short, it’s nearly always vital.
More organisations are using non-permanent workers as the economy is becoming increasingly unstable and digital collaboration becomes easier. Therefore it’s becoming increasingly important for organisations to rethink their internal processes for new starters. One of the most overlooked is the most crucial; offboarding.
When permanent employees leave a company, they will complete the usual exit interview questions. They’ll receive a congratulatory speech and goodbye celebrations and may even continue contact via company alumni programmes. Contractors rarely receive the same treatment, which can leave them feeling unappreciated.
Treating your contractors differently to permanent staff when offboarding is dangerous for your business
You face potentially severe asset loss and legal and security threats when you improperly offboard staff. Without a formalised offboarding process, you also expose yourself to a potentially sour reputation among temporary and contracting staff.
What contractors say and do after leaving your company will impact your ability to hire future contractors. Contractors share their experiences on online forums, freelancer marketplaces and social media networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Online forums are also the first place that other contractors go to research future employers before taking on a project.
Do not treat your contractors any differently from your permanent recruits regarding your employee offboarding process. Give them the recognition and feedback opportunities they deserve as you would for a permanent recruit.
How to ensure your contractors complete a successful offboarding process
1. Use structured communication to show your appreciation and prevent IP loss
When a contractor nears the end of their contract, let people know about their upcoming departure. Inform everyone as you would for a permanent employee, not just the right parts of IT and HR. As part of this, remind people about the work they have completed and publicly thank them.
By letting colleagues know about their departure, staff have time to share contact details and connect on LinkedIn. This way, contractors are never far away should someone in your organisation need their expertise again. Your team members will also have time to extract all the knowledge, expertise and skills they need from the contractor.
Finally, make them feel appreciated. A contractor's last day shouldn't pass without recognition or thanks for their contributions. They may not feel the need to offer your company any future loyalty if you forget them. Organising a simple card, leaving lunch, or a small gift will make them feel valued.
2. Ask for feedback to improve your internal processes
Exit interviews are your opportunity to get a real insight into what it's like to work at your company. As slightly removed staff members, they will share more objective areas for improvement. Contractors will also have a more informed view of the external market, where you battle for talent daily.
- Prepare several questions and use the answers to help build and improve. For example: Did they feel welcomed and integrated into the company culture, with access to everything they needed to perform well?
- Did they achieve everything that they hoped to accomplish during their assignment? If not, why?
- How much has this contract enhanced their future employability?
- Would they return to the company if you offered the right role?
- Would they recommend you as an employer?
- Are there any areas where they feel your organisation could have improved their experience?
Feedback forms and exit interviews are also a great time to recover any company assets and close out any final expenses.
3. Ask if your contractor would like to stay connected
Don't assume your contractor will return at the drop of a hat. Contractors are in control of where they go next. Take the time to let them know about the likelihood of future roles. If you are in a position to support your contractor with further introductions to valuable connections, then do so as well.
If you don't yet have formal alumni job alerts, add contractors on their professional social profiles. While you're there, endorse them for any skills and achievements you've witnessed during their time at your company. Also, provide a detailed reference and constructive feedback via the recruiter who placed them.
Don't fall at the last hurdle. You'll damage your relationship by rushing a contractor out of the door when they finish their assignment. Take your time, listen to their feedback, and you'll uncover a host of other benefits and opportunities too.
Contractor management and offboarding process: Next steps for your business
Speak to your team to evaluate your current contractor onboarding checklist and process. If you feel it needs improving, Hays can help. Discuss your contractor management with one of our experts by emailing Hays on our contact page.
You can also read about our contractor employer services here.
AUTHOR
Matthew Dickason
Global Managing Director, Hays Talent Solutions
Matthew is the Global Managing Director for Hays Talent Solutions, having joined Hays in 2005. Previous roles held at Hays include Business Director in the UK and Chief Operating Officer for Asia Pacific. He is now responsible for leading the global business of Hays Talent Solutions and investing to ensure clients retain a competitive advantage in talent acquisition from the delivery of Hays MSP, RPO, technology and modular service solutions.
Prior to joining Hays, Matthew worked within Engineering, Research, Operations and Commercial areas at Johnson Matthey and Corning Inc. He has formal qualifications in Organisational Psychology and Industrial Engineering.