Know how your contractors are doing in your clients’ teams

If you run or manage people at a software consultancy, you have an odd job. You’re responsible for people whose work you almost never see. They join the client’s stand-ups, work in the client’s codebase, and answer to the client’s tech lead. You see them at the odd one-to-one, maybe a company social, and in the occasional message from the client, which usually only arrives when something has gone wrong.

That makes it hard to do the things a good manager should: back your people up, help them grow, put the right person on the next engagement, and spot a problem before it becomes a lost client. This guide is about closing that gap by getting honest, regular feedback from the teams your people are actually working in.

Why it’s so hard to know how your people are doing

Most consultancies I’ve seen rely on some mix of these, and none of them tell you much:

• ✓
  The contractor’s own account of how things are going, which is honest but only one view.
• ✓
  An account manager’s check-in with the client’s manager, who may not work closely with them either.
• ✓
  Silence, which gets read as “everything’s fine”.
• ✓
  A complaint, which arrives once it’s already a problem.
• ✓
  Renewal or extension, which tells you the client is happy enough, but not why, or what to work on.

The people who really know are the developers, testers, designers, and product people sitting next to your contractor every day. They rarely get asked, and when they do it’s usually by their own manager, in a way that doesn’t feel safe to be honest in.

What changes when you ask the client team

• Instead ofGuessing from the occasional client email.
  →
  TryAnonymous feedback from the people they work with every day.
• Instead ofFinding out about problems when the client escalates.
  →
  TrySpotting gaps early, while there’s time to help.
• Instead ofA one-to-one where you have nothing specific to talk about.
  →
  TryOne or two clear things to work on, in the client’s own words.
• Instead of“They’re great, trust us” when pitching the next engagement.
  →
  TryEvidence of how client teams have trusted your people before.
• Instead ofA contractor who feels forgotten by their own company.
  →
  TrySomeone who knows you’re paying attention to their growth.

How to set it up

1. 1
   Agree it with the client first. Tell the client’s manager what you’d like to do and why: it helps your person do a better job for them. Most clients are glad to see a supplier invest in its people. Check whether they have rules about their staff giving feedback to suppliers, and agree who it’s fine to ask.
2. 2
   Tell your contractor before anyone else. Explain that it’s for their growth and to help you support them, not a way of checking up on them. Ask them who in the client team sees their work most. They’ll usually know better than you.
3. 3
   Set up their role and your values. Describe the responsibilities they actually have on this engagement, not a generic job title. A contractor might be the only person on the team doing their kind of work, so the responsibilities need to be specific to be useful.
4. 4
   Pick at least three reviewers from the client team. Trust Reviews needs at least three responses before it will summarise, so ask four or five to be safe. A mix of people works best: someone they pair with, someone they hand work to, and someone from product or delivery.
5. 5
   Read the summary, then talk about it. You’ll get the summary, not the individual answers. Read it first, then go through it with your contractor in a one-to-one and agree one or two things to work on.
6. 6
   Thank the client team. A short note through the client’s manager, and maybe a line about what your person is going to work on, shows the feedback was worth giving and makes the next round easier.

When to send reviews

Twice a year per person is plenty for most consultancies. On top of that, a few moments are worth a review of their own:

• Two or three months into a new engagement, once the team knows them well enough to say something useful, and while there’s still time to adjust.
• A month or so before an engagement ends or renews, so you know how things stand before the conversation with the client.
• During probation, if your new starters go straight onto client work. Two reviews in a six-month probation gives them two chances to hear and act on feedback.

What to do with the results

Help your people grow

This is the main reason to do it. Contractors often get less feedback than anyone else in the room, because the client doesn’t see it as their job and their own company isn’t there to see. A summary in the client team’s own words gives you something real to talk about in one-to-ones and in career conversations.

Staff the next engagement well

Over time you’ll see who client teams trust with what. That’s useful when you’re choosing who to put forward for a new client, who could lead a team, and who would benefit from a different kind of engagement.

Spot trouble early

A low trust score or a theme in the “what could they do to help more” answers is far cheaper to deal with now than as an escalation in three months. It’s also a chance to check whether the problem is your person, or the way the engagement has been set up.

Show clients what they’re getting

With your contractor’s agreement, you can share a summary with the client, or draw on past summaries when you’re pitching. It turns “our people are good” into something a client can actually believe. Keep this as a by-product, though. If your people think every review is a sales document, the feedback will get kinder and less useful.

What to ask

Keep it short and about trust. I use five questions: two ratings (how often people trust the person to live your values, and to do each of their responsibilities), one about how often their engagement impresses, and two free-text questions about when they impressed people and when they could have helped more. For contractors, I’d use your consultancy’s values rather than the client’s, as they’re the ones your people are measured against. You can see the exact form on the example review, and there’s more on the basics in the guide to running a 360 peer review for a small team.

Start with one engagement

You don’t need to roll this out across the whole company. Pick one client you have a good relationship with and one or two people who are keen, and run a review each. See how the client team responds, what you learn, and whether your people find it useful. If it works, you’ll have a story to tell the rest of the company, and probably the next client too. See the pricing page for the organisation plans when you’re ready to go further.