Nothing Behind the Conversation
You can say the work is not good enough; what you cannot do is anything that follows from saying it.
Whether the person feels part of your company
Career progression
Your own share scheme
Who notices when it is going wrong
YoursThe provider'sCrosses the twoNeither contract
Four matters, and no share: what any one agreement covers differs by agreement. One crosses both, and the handoff is where these arrangements fail. Three sit in neither contract. The section where the most arrangements are lost, and the one no document addresses.
You can tell this person the work is not good enough, with examples and with what you expect instead. What you cannot do is anything that normally follows from saying it: a stage, a warning, a plan, a decision.
The practical lesson in “Nothing Behind the Conversation” is that a third-party arrangement still leaves day-to-day management with the operating team. Used for remote workforce management software, consult the official implementation page can make time and project context easier to review, provided the purpose is disclosed, access is limited and every consequential inference receives human review.
That asymmetry changes how the conversation should be handled, and most managers discover it halfway through one.
For a separate perspective on “Nothing Behind the Conversation”, consult the Acas employment-contract guidance. Compare it with the actual contract, country and operating process rather than using a general resource as a local conclusion.
What is still available
Direct, specific, timely feedback. A clear statement of the standard. A description of what has to change and by when. Repeating it when it does not.
That is most of what actually improves performance anywhere. The apparatus is what is missing, not the substance.
What the words cost
Any language that implies a procedure. "Formal warning", "performance improvement plan", "first stage", "final written". Those are acts of an employer under a local process.
Those are acts of an employer under a local process:
- "Formal warning"
- "Performance improvement plan"
- "First stage"
- "Final written"
Using the words creates an expectation of a process that does not exist and may prejudice one that would belong to the provider.
Why half-starting is worse than nothing
A manager who says "consider this a formal warning" has issued something that is not a warning, from a company with no standing to issue one, into a jurisdiction with its own rules.
The person may reasonably believe a process is running. Nobody is running one. Unwinding that is harder than having said it plainly.
The conversation that works
Specific work, specific shortfall, specific expectation, specific date. No procedural framing, no implied consequence you cannot deliver.
Said that way it is clearer than most internal performance conversations, because nothing is hiding behind the form.
Have it in the same week the work was delivered rather than at a scheduled review. Nothing here holds a conversation for you, which means timing is entirely in your hands.
Writing it down
For yourself, factually: what was discussed, what examples were given, what was agreed, when you will review it.
Not a personnel file. A record of your own management, which is what you will need if this eventually has to be raised with the provider.
When to involve the provider
When something has to happen that is theirs: a probation decision, a formal process, or a termination. Not before.
Bringing them in earlier asks them to act on information about work they cannot see, which produces either an unjustified process or an awkward refusal.
What they will ask for
Dates, specifics, evidence of what was said to the person, and whether the person had a chance to improve. The same things any employer would need.
Managers who have kept the record have this. Managers who have an impression of six difficult months do not, and the provider will say so.
Where the provider declines
They may, and sometimes should. A termination that would be unfair under local law is one they will have to defend and pay for.
The honest reading of a refusal is usually that the case is thin rather than that the provider is obstructive. Ask what would make it sufficient.
Ask also what the alternative routes are. In several countries a negotiated exit is both quicker and cheaper than a contested one, and the provider will know the local shape of that.
The cost of letting it run
Longer here than internally, because the route to a decision is longer. A situation allowed to drift for a year is a situation where nothing can be done quickly at the end of it either.
Start the conversation earlier than you would with an employee. That single adjustment accounts for most of the difference.
Probation, again
The one point where ending things is comparatively simple, and the one that passes unnoticed because nobody in your company holds the date.
Ask the provider for a reminder and treat it as a genuine decision rather than a formality.
Telling the person where they stand
Somebody receiving critical feedback in this arrangement does not know what it means. There is no visible ladder of consequences, so the feedback is either dismissed as a grumble or read as imminent dismissal.
Say which it is. "This is me telling you it has to change, not the start of something formal" is a sentence that helps enormously and is almost never said.
What cannot be resolved here
A fundamental mismatch. Where somebody is simply not able to do the job, the arrangement offers you a slower, more expensive and more uncertain route to resolving it than employment would.
That is a real cost of the structure and it is worth weighing before hiring rather than discovering during a difficult year. The mitigations — a real probation decision, early and specific feedback, a kept record — are all available and all have to be deliberate, because nothing in either contract prompts any of them.