Insights from Government Environment
Every decade or so, governments declare the urgent need to reduce reliance on consultants, contingent labor staff and contractors and replace them with full-time public service employees.
The reasons are varied, but one common one is a cost comparison: Contractors invariably cost around $5K - $6K a week, a whopping $200K plus per annum! Equivalent public servants earn about half that amount. Sure, the difference is not quite that much after sick, annual and other leave and entitlement costs, but important, nonetheless. Multiply them over a hundred or even thousands of personnel; the yearly cost differences amount to millions.
Contractors, Consultants or Employees?
So where is the value of contractors, consultants, and contingent labor? Here are four:
Security & Tenure
A key benefit of the public service is job security and tenure. Many public servants enjoy years, if not decades, in a department or agency, with attractive training, support facilities and benefits. Even if underperforming, support and assistance are at hand.
Contracting life is vastly different. Even in long-term, multi-year projects, contractors know too well that an assignment can end abruptly, for no reason, despite the highest performance and output, often with a weeks notice, if any at all.
Contractors are, therefore, extra keen to demonstrate greater value, deliver more and work with greater focus than their public servant colleagues. Often, they are one step removed from general office life, meetings, staff social events training and other occasions employees must attend.
Contractors' job descriptions are usually far tighter, with specific deliverables and schedules
Expertise & Experience
Although public servant expertise and experience are generally far broader than contractors, they often lack the highly focused skills and experience contractors bring. For example, recently, a significant government department needed specialised remediation skills for their technology platform. Although the department had a very competent in-house ICT department, no one had the five years of experience needed that contractors brought. None had identified then fixed similar issues in other enterprises nor enjoyed free access to the technology's engineers, advanced training, and technical peer groups. None had the time to devote either.
Yes, the three contractors hired cost significant money – (sixty days at 2k a day times three $360K!); however, they corrected issues and eliminated work frustrations that had gone unresolved for years, impacting all six hundred staff.
Time & Attendance
Contractors are paid daily or even hourly for the time actually worked. Clients must approve their time sheets weekly or monthly. Sick days, public holidays and other annual leave cannot be billed. Given short-term contracts, renewed only if satisfactory, contractors develop additional vigilance and determination.
Project or BAU Mentality
Unlike employees, contractors are project focused; they are hired to take a piece of work from start to handover. To accomplish this, contractors must have a project mentality acutely aware of the looming handover to Business as Usual.
Hence contractors follow prescriptive project methodologies and disciplines, use collaborative tools and often onerous reporting.
Conclusion
Contractors are neither smarter, nor do they work harder than public servants, but they do have significantly different skills and mindsets. Government agencies must learn to optimise their use and value to deliver their promises. Use contractors, pay their higher rates, but buddy them up with public service personnel assigned to work alongside them, to learn from them and garner the knowledge and skills they bring.
About CUE-X
CUE-X has a team of experienced consultants and contractors that work across many of the major federal government agencies. CUE-X specialises in the advice, delivery, management, recruitment, training and development of ICT programmes, voice of customer, customer data, business transformation, programme management and organisational change. For more information go to www.cue-x.com
