Take good care of your IT consultants
The tech industry has been on a roll for a few decades. Talent competition can be fierce, and the organisations that genuinely take care of their employees are well-equipped to succeed. As Covid-19 has made wellbeing an even more pressing matter, it’s an excellent time to remind ourselves that all this applies to external consultants, too.
Digitalisation and tech have been the magic ingredients for many companies during the past years. Technology is a huge enabling factor, but companies need a great group of people behind the tech to make it a true competitive advantage. This goes for cutting-edge software companies and old-fashioned corporations slowly shifting their core business towards software services.
One aspect of building a great team is attracting talent, but equally important is to ensure people enjoy their stay at their company.
To this end, I have an argument to make: There should be no differentiation between internal specialists and external consultants within a tech organisation. In addition to a healthy culture for the employees, it’s vital to enable external consultants to feel welcome and enjoy their time in the organisation — regardless of whose payroll they’re on. Here’s why.
The growing number of options
Practically all work in tech can be outsourced to external consultants, and it often makes sense. Outsourcing happens for a number of reasons, but recently the main reason has been that companies simply cannot recruit the talent they need.
It’s a seller’s market: senior consultants can often pick and choose the most interesting projects to take on. It’s also easy for a specialist to switch projects if their current one is not a good fit.
So the question on the employer’s mind should be: how do you make a project great for a consultant? Interesting gigs tend to have some commonalities:
- The feeling of belonging to a team (instead of just being an external resource)
- The possibility to have a tangible impact on the organisation and tech
- An organisation that is open to change and new ideas
- A modern organisation and tech — or at least the willingness to improve
All in the same boat
Consultants might not be permanently employed by you, but if you want to build a good team in the long term, you simply must make everyone understand they’re key players. Here are some reasons why:
- Better overall team spirit — team spirit isn’t built on uneven footing. Everyone needs to feel equally welcome to the team.
- Better reputation as an employer — in the IT industry, everybody knows each other. Consultants move from organisation to organisation, cross-pollinating cultures and sharing information about companies and their ways of working. In the long term, every company builds a reputation, which can be a positive or negative factor in your recruitment efforts. You can affect which it is.
- Lower hourly prices — achieving lower hourly prices by fostering a great work experience might sound surprising. There’s a logical explanation — it’s all about having power at the negotiation table. If you have the best place to work, many consultants will want to work for you. You can be much more confident when negotiating contracts if you have a great workplace to offer.
Build the foundation
So, what can you do next if you’re leading an organisation with external consultants?
- Create common practices for all, without regard to their status. Think in terms of people, not internals and externals.
- Value everyone’s time (and your money) — you’ve brought the consultants in because of their expertise. You can show you value their time by, for instance, having all the tools they need available. Skip the thing where they have to wait for a corporate IT laptop for five weeks before they can start actual work.
- Give meaning to the consultant’s work. If the meaning behind the work itself isn’t obvious, explain the bigger picture so that people understand the reasons behind the tasks.
- Listen to the consultants. Ask for feedback — they usually know the newest innovations and best practices in their field.
Make tech work meaningful
The critical point here is easy to summarise: If you are working in a tech company that wants to achieve great things, take good care of all the people working for you — employees and consultants. Make sure they are happy. Make sure they understand the reasons behind the chosen way of working. This is how you get the right kind of impact for your organisation, your customers, and your business.
Our mission at Polar Squad is to make tech work meaningful. Our key tenet is that organisations flourish when they take care of people.
If you’re a leader in a tech company, I hope you share our sentiments and make no separation between your employees or external people that work with you. It makes all the difference in your culture and recruitment efforts in the long run — guaranteed.
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PS. If you’re a DevOps professional and share our thoughts about meaningful tech work, please do contact us. We’re hiring!
