Oracle Expert

For those who are not familiar with the terminology, an IT contractor is an IT professional who chooses to offer their expertise for a client as an independent contractor. IT contractors are normally hired on a fixed time basis, e.g. 3 months, 6 months or 1 year.

With the current credit climate, a lot of financial institutions have slimmed down their IT departments to cut cost, by reducing staff, or persuading some contractors to take on permanent employment.

Some IT contractors that are retained are normally some of the best talents within the department.  With the reduction of staff, workload level seems to go up and contributing to employee burnouts.

There was a tendency for managers to turn to these superstars for help more and more. It is natural. They excel in what they do. And because of that, more and more tasks are sent their way, from the flagship projects, to the annoying niggling operational issues which are costing quite a lot of overtime callouts.

Oh, and we have some angry business users demanding overdue responses from the IT department. Again, superstars sent to the rescue.

Managers forget to push tasks to the rest of the team, as it is easier to get results from the superstars. Instead of demanding more from the average performers, managers demand more from their superstars. When superstars are reassigned to look at some critical issues, existing tasks that are not as technically demanding are not reassigned and redistributed to the some of the more average performers within the team.

At the end of the day, IT contractors are only human, and they burnout too, physically or mentally. And then they would leave, leaving managers realizing (often too late) how the superstar actually has been taking on the workload of two or three average performers. Your best talents will not easily be put off with fierce market competition. Cream will always rise to the top.

Managers, your challenge is to spot these talents and hang on to them.