Today I had a chat with one of my customers, discussing a very old management issue, which I call “managing contractors vs. employees” for the lack of better terms. Therefore, I have been interested in behavioral and psychological rater than money and tax aspects. Tonight I tried to find any similar discussion in Google, and - no surprise - could not find anything.
That’s why I decided to share with you some of my observations.
First of all, I am not trying to create any classification or taxonomy here. I realize that there is an entire spectrum between these two categories of workers. Secondly, I don’t want to suggest that all employees (contractors) possess all features described below. However, what is true; people wearing a specific hat (whether an employee’s one or a contractor’s one) with years tend to belong to one end of the spectrum.
Here you go:
1. Contractors sell time, employees sell skills.
2. Contractors are less concerned on what they do compare to employees. A contractor can take an assignment even he does not like it (or even his/her skills don’t perfectly match) and do it. Employees are more often becoming upset if they have to perform a task that they don’t like.
3. Contractors look for a good decision. If they have to make this decision, they tend to come up with quicker solution that is 70% perfect. Employees are not happy with 70 or even 90%, they are looking for perfection.
4. In terms of Herzberg’s theory employees are more interested in motivator factors, and contractors are more interested in the hygiene factors. Employees can work all night on an interesting problem if there is enough pizza around, contractors won’t.
5. Being quite adamant about working on tasks they like, employees hate interruption. They aim for perfection and don’t like multitasking. Contractors can switch their minds easily and minimal context change.
6. Since employees value motivating factors more, they are usually more loyal. Contractors are loyal for a moment.
7. Employees feel very attached to the product of their work. If one can take an example from the IT industry, employees (for example, software developers) consider programs their babies. They feel very upset if anyone treats the babies not right or tries to kill them. Contractors don’t give a damn: projects come, projects go.
Having said all that, I would like to emphasize again that I am using the “contractor” and “employee” words as terms to name the two polar groups (from the behavior point of view) and don’t mean the actual work status.