Telling Them Something Their Employer Has Not
News about their own employment reaching the person from you rather than from their employer is a recurring failure.
Day-to-day direction
Any employment obligation to the person
Promising the person anything about their job
Being the person's employer
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. One sits in neither contract. The line that is not there, and the one people keep acting as though were.
News about somebody's own employment reaching them from you rather than from their employer is a recurring failure in these arrangements, and it is almost always caused by good intentions.
The practical lesson in “Telling Them Something Their Employer Has Not” is that a third-party arrangement still leaves day-to-day management with the operating team. Used for limbic resonance in relationships, see the complete Monitask overview can make time and project context easier to review, provided the purpose is disclosed, access is limited and every consequential inference receives human review.
A manager who knows something and likes the person tells them. The provider then has to deliver a document that contradicts, delays or reframes it.
A broader benchmark for “Telling Them Something Their Employer Has Not” is the Remote global-employment resources. Read it alongside the service agreement and employment facts so that general guidance informs, rather than replaces, case-specific judgement.
The ordinary version
You have agreed a salary increase internally. It will take six weeks to reach a contract. You tell the person on the day you decide, because it is good news and they have earned it.
Six weeks later they ask why nothing has changed, and the answer involves a payroll cut-off they did not know existed.
The worse version
You know the arrangement is ending. The provider has not yet been given notice, and the person has not been told anything by their employer.
Telling them first is kind and it is also the version that creates a genuine legal problem, because their employer now has a person who knows about a termination that has not been initiated.
Why it keeps happening
Because you are the company they see. Silence from you feels like withholding, and the natural instinct of a decent manager is to close the gap.
The instinct is right and the timing is wrong. What the person needs is not earlier information but accurate information about what has actually been done.
The order that works
Decide. Instruct the provider in writing. Tell the person what you have asked for and when you expect it. Let the provider deliver the document. Confirm with the person afterwards.
Five steps, in that order:
- Decide.
- Instruct the provider, in writing.
- Tell the person what you have asked for and when to expect it.
- Let the provider deliver the document.
- Confirm with the person afterwards.
The only one most managers skip is the third, which is the one that makes the wait tolerable.
The sentence to use instead
"I've asked the provider to increase your salary to X from the first of April. They'll send you the paperwork. If you haven't heard in two weeks, tell me."
That tells them everything, commits only to what you control, and gives them a check they can run themselves.
Where silence is actually correct
Anything about termination, restructuring, or a decision not yet made. Those belong to the employer and to a process, and an early word from you removes options that may be in the person's interest.
Saying nothing feels bad. Saying something is worse, and in several jurisdictions it prejudices a process the person is entitled to.
What to do when a manager has already spoken
Tell the provider immediately and plainly. They deal with this regularly and are usually willing to accelerate or to frame the communication so the person is not caught between two accounts.
The failure mode is hoping it will resolve itself, which it does not, because the person is now waiting.
The provider's side of it
Providers frequently do not tell the person things either, or tell them in a template email with no context. The person then hears something consequential from a company they have little relationship with.
Ask the provider what they will send and when, so the two communications are not in conflict. Most will share the wording if asked.
Agreeing who says what, once
At the start of the relationship, settle it: the provider communicates anything contractual, you communicate anything about the work, and significant news is coordinated between you.
Written down in a paragraph, it survives both your account manager and your own successor.
The person's own position
They are being managed by one company and employed by another, and when the two are not coordinated they are the only person who experiences both.
Recognising that out loud — and inviting them to tell you when the two accounts diverge — turns them into somebody who flags the problem rather than somebody who absorbs it.
What this costs when it goes wrong
Trust, and specifically trust in you rather than in the provider. The person has no relationship with the provider to damage.
Every promise that arrives late is attributed to the manager who made it, which is the opposite of the intended effect and is why this is worth more care than it seems to deserve.
What coordination cannot fix
A decision your own company has not made. Managers often want to reassure somebody about something genuinely undecided — whether the team continues, whether the arrangement converts, whether there will be a role next year.
No amount of sequencing makes that sayable. The only honest option is to describe what is decided, name what is not, and say when you expect to know, which is less comforting than people want and is the thing that survives being wrong.