If an external consultant is recruited for a temporary project assignment, more options exist for administering the contract than just freelancing. However, individual conditions must be examined..
This scenario unfolded when one of our client’s site managers suddenly left a project in the Congo for health reasons. The client, from the power generation industry, needed to find a replacement a quickly as possible to fill the vacant position.
Here, the country of assignment not only presented a challenge - the project conditions also demanded exceptional hands-on qualities in addition to technical expertise.
And there was this: our client wanted the flexibility of a freelancer, the previous person was a full-time employee. This required that the new - this time external - specialist be integrated to a certain extent into the company hierarchy.
The Italian engineer had held leading positions on major international projects. In addition, he was ready to go to work on the new project right away.
In a second step, we analyzed which type of external consultant contract was right for him. Taking into consideration the variables of assignment location, assignment duration, as well as the city of residence and age of the consultant, we determined that our hiring him as a temporary employee was the best solution.
Furthermore, this offered him the standard flexibility of a freelancer, combined with a range of new advantages:
For our client, the solution was also advantageous, since, compared to freelancing, being an international temporary employee meant that he was more closely integrated into the company hierarchy.
Alongside this organizational plus point, it also became quickly clear that the right person was on the job: the new, external site manager improved - also by making several unpleasant decisions - project structures and the relationship to the end client in only a short period of time.
Small companies in particular can be faced with unanticipated challenges when needing to operate in foreign markets. Compared to large-sized firms, they rarely have at their disposal their own, professional structures abroad...
For an Italian drilling company looking to work in Germany, the marketplace may have been geographically close, but the legal provisions and language barriers made it remote.
In Italy, the procedures for drilling were already familiar and managed with proven checklists. But were these instruments also applicable to Germany?
For this reason, Ergonos proposed to the client that they hire an independent German consultant for a short-term assignment. Ergonos recruited this consultant from their own network.
The outside expert had local contacts within the mining and drilling industries, and, due to his previous professional experience, a in-depth knowledge of highly sensitive engineering-safety issues. Furthermore, he had already worked for other Italian clients.
With his managerial and facilitation skills, he was able to negotiate the German marketplace quickly and assuredly. As a result of his fact-finding, he made a considerable contribution to clarifying within a short period of time the responsibilities between the Italian contractor, the German end client and local officials, so that the deep drilling could begin as soon as possible.
With some recruitment contracts, two questions coincide. First and most urgent is: How do you find the right person for the job in a short period of time? The second, and initially still subordinate one is: How should this person be integrated into the company?...
Our client from the steel industry was also facing both these problems. At first they tried on their own to find the right HSE manager for a project in Saudi Arabia. Time was of the essence: the Saudi Arabian contractor had already turned down two of their HSE recruits.
In the process, it became clear that both parties had different views of HSE culture. For our client, HSE was more of a pragmatic concern connected to an individual project. By contrast, for the end client - whose parent firm operates in the petrochemical industry - HSE plays a strategic role that extends beyond the individual project.
From a short-list, one candidate stood out: an HSE specialist who was flexible and, despite his young age, already had years of international HSE experience - also in the highly regulated offshore industry.
Apart from determining his contractual status, the first problem was solved with this candidate: the ongoing project was no longer threatened by the non-acceptance of the HSE manager.
In addition, by succeeding in advising the client to hire the candidate as an employee, the corner stone was laid for solving the second, longer-term problem: changing company culture when it comes to implementing HSE processes and standards beyond the individual project calls for a longer-term engagement - and thus also the right employment perspective.
