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Difficult and Unresponsive Staff

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by consultant fc

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We have a situation at a site where the incumbent contractor has been in place for the last 5 to 6 years for operational support of the IT infrastructure and has become very uncooperative and unresponsive to the hiring management staff request for information. This is a new situation for me since normally contractors attempt to please customers and not attempt to usurp the supervising agency's authority to review, approve, and generally stay engaged in the day-to-day operations. Our company leadership in the past has probably not fully engaged in the operational aspects of the contractor and now due to high customer dissatisfaction desires to do so but appears to be afraid to engage the contractor on there behavior even though it is clear that the contractors work must be supervised to ensure that the best interests of the organization are served. After all, it will be us, the employees, not the contractors who will be held accountable in the end. What actions do you recommend to break this stalemate and improve the responsiveness of the contracted staff in this area, and to obtain the necessary information to understand the entire operational setup should the vendor walk away from the day to day support of the organization?I do not believe the replacement of personnel is an option at this point based on management’s reluctance to call the contractor on the carpet to date.

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by timwalsh

I don't envy you your situation.

You are unlikely to be able to change the contractor's behavior because they have not been held accountable for the quality of their work for a while and thus there is no incentive for them to change.

Dig out the contract this contractor signed and look for clauses that cover guarenteed level of effort, response times, quarenteed quality of service, quality control, etc. (if this s a "good" contract there should be something in it that protects your organization).

It looks like your biggest job is going to be to convince your management structure that something MUST be done. Unless they are willing to take this contractor to taks for shoddy work, any and all complaints will only fall on deaf ears.

Document EVERYTHING! Hopefully someone has been doing this all along. If nothing else, when the contract comes up for renewal (hopefully soon), this documentation will provide ammunition for hiring another support contractor.

To protect yourorganization, it will become incumbent on you (or someone) to find out as much info as possible (on your own, probably - don't expect help from the contractor) about your operational setup.

If your organization's upper management is trulu afraid to take the contractor to task, I would suspect one of three things:
1. They signed a REALLY bad support contract that doesn't give them any legal recourse against the contractor.
2. The contractor has some dirt on someone at the upper levels of management in your organization.
3. Good old boy network - The contractor (or a member of his family) is good friends with, or a member of the family of, someone with a lot of power in your organization (or a member of his family).

by danananan

If the person is a solo contractor working independently, I'd agree that the proper course would be to document all the issues and advise the contractor that he isn't living up to the obligations of the contract.

If the person is part of a largercontracting company, I'd work with the account manager for the agency and tell them to adress the issues immediately or replace the contractor.

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