I have been involved, in a few instances, on jobs where I act as the agent between two principal actors. There is a staffing company (the name of which I cannot seem to remember) that hired me to do a few jobs over the past few years for Yum! brand restaurants including, but not limited to, virtual private network installation and configuration. In this setting, the work order was submitted by a manager of one of the Yum! brand location managers, and fulfilled by the staffing company located in California. I was contracted to meet with the manager, and the job duties were outlined by the staffing agency.
In this particular instance, the work was completed and done satisfactorily, but things can certainly go awry. One principal, the staffing agency, is concerned mainly with having the job done in a timely manner, and done properly. They were not as concerned with having it done at a certain time of day, and did not seem to be bothered with attire or onsite attitude. The other principal, the manger of the Yum! brands location, may have been concerned with promptness, attire, attitude, and other performance measures that could affect customer morale at the location.
I suppose that this case is curious, however, because Yum! brands always has the option to drop the staffing agency and choose another if the performance of the agent is not up to the manager's standards. The manager cannot directly dispense of the agent in this example. This makes it important for the staffing agency to set the standards for the contractors they use.
As the agent in this circumstance, I am more concerned with satisfying the criteria set by the staffing agency, because, at the end of the day, they write the check to me. The incentives are not aligned so that I am concerned with the demands of the manager of the location. It is strange though, that this would not have constituted as a failure if I had not pleased the manger at the location; perhaps this work setup is not aligned in a way that is sensible for the manager. In this scenario, it would be valuable for the staffing agency to have some sort of code-of-conduct that aligns with the desires of the managers of the locations. This seems to be the best way to avoid any issues regarding different opinions about performance. The staffing agency should, and in practice usually does, understand the needs of the mangers on location. When I think back, there were documents detailing dress code and other behavioral technicalities while on site.
Perhaps another way to resolve tensions would be to give the managers the ability to directly dismiss or dictate to the contractor the work to be done. It seems to me that the manager needs to have more power in this relationship. This might shift incentives in a way so that the contractor is induced to please both the staffing agency as well as the manger.
Do you think there was a reason that the discrepancies between the 2 agents didn't cause a problem? Were there other, more prominent, factors that lead to a successful transaction?
ReplyDeleteI found this a little confusing the way you related the story. This particular sentence was hard for me to decipher:
ReplyDelete"In this setting, the work order was submitted by a manager of one of the Yum! brand location managers, and fulfilled by the staffing company located in California."
Does this mean that somebody who does not work on site submitted the order but that you ultimately met with the on site manager, where both of these people work for Yum? If so, this is more a quadrilateral than a triangle.
As a practical matter, how long does it take to put in a VPN? If it takes the better part of the day, then I'm not sure how much the local store manager has a right to complain. If it takes an hour or less,then I can see wanting it done during a time of day when they aren't busy.
It would never have occurred to me that dress code would be an issue. But noise and other disruption I could see mattering a lot.
As an example of a more general matter that higher ups subcontract with an outside firm but it is the rank and file who deals with the outside firm, that surely does have elements of a triangle. In your case there is the added wrinkle that the outside firm contracted with you.
It sounds like the staffing company was in charge of hiring you to do the work and telling you what needed to be done, but you had to meet with the on-site manager to handle the logistics of getting the work done? It is interesting how you said that there is not much of an incentive for you to work to please the manager as opposed to the staffing agency. IF there was a conflict between you and the manager, would the staffing agency be in charge of handling the issue, or would that not concern them?
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