The Manager Who Thinks They Are the Employer
A line manager acting on an authority they do not have does most of the damage in these arrangements.
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.
A line manager acting on an authority they do not have does most of the damage in these arrangements, in good faith, because nobody told them the authority was missing.
The management gap in “The Manager Who Thinks They Are the Employer” becomes harder when distributed work is visible only through anecdotes. A team considering check the published capability page for internal transfer policy can add transparent time and project context, but performance conclusions should still combine agreed outcomes, direct conversation and a documented opportunity to correct the record.
They are not being careless. They are doing exactly what they do with every other person on their team.
For a separate perspective on “The Manager Who Thinks They Are the Employer”, consult the Papaya Global workforce articles. Compare it with the actual contract, country and operating process rather than using a general resource as a local conclusion.
What the manager actually knows
That a new person has joined, that the person reports to them, and that the arrangement is "through a provider" — a phrase they heard once and understood to be an administrative detail.
Nothing in that brief tells them which of their usual actions are no longer available.
The actions that cause problems
Agreeing a pay rise in a one-to-one. Approving extra leave. Extending a probation. Telling somebody their performance is a formal concern. Letting somebody go at the end of a conversation.
Each is routine for a manager:
- Agreeing a pay rise in a one-to-one.
- Approving extra leave.
- Extending a probation period.
- Telling somebody their performance is a formal concern.
- Letting somebody go at the end of a conversation.
Each here is either void, an instruction to somebody else, or an act with consequences for a company that was not consulted.
Why it matters beyond the embarrassment
A manager who behaves in every respect as the employer is the single clearest fact pattern in a misclassification argument. The question is not what the contracts say but what actually happened week to week.
That exposure is created by behaviour you do not see, in a country you are not in, by somebody who has never read the agreement.
The briefing that prevents most of it
Fifteen minutes, before the first hire: here is who employs them, here is what is yours, here is what has to come to me, here is what to say if they ask about pay.
Four points. The managers who get this almost never cause the problems; the ones who do not, reliably do.
The one-page card
A short note the manager keeps: direction is yours; pay, leave, notice, title and endings go through the provider; promise only what you control; tell me before you tell them.
Written once, reused for every manager, handed over when they change. It is the cheapest control available in this whole arrangement.
What to do when they have already acted
Find out exactly what was said and when, in the manager's own words, before contacting the provider. Reconstructed later it will be vaguer and more defensible, which is less useful.
Then tell the provider. Most situations are recoverable if raised within days and not if raised after the person has acted on them.
Tell the manager what happened as well, without making it a disciplinary matter. The point is that they learn the boundary, not that they stop raising things.
Performance, specifically
A manager can say the work is not good enough, give examples, and set expectations. That is direction and feedback.
What they cannot do is run a performance process, issue a warning, or say anything that sounds like a stage in one. Those belong to an employer and a half-started process is worse than none.
The manager who over-corrects
The opposite failure: a manager who, having been told they are not the employer, stops managing. No feedback, no direction, no difficult conversations, on the theory that everything now goes through the provider.
The person then has nobody at all. This is the commoner failure among careful managers and it is more damaging than the first.
Drawing the line for them
Direction, priorities, feedback, standards, recognition, context, inclusion: yours, entirely, and nobody else will do any of it. Employment terms and process: not yours, and not available.
Put like that, most managers find it straightforward. Put as a list of prohibitions, they disengage.
Who should hold the relationship
One named person in your company who owns the provider relationship, knows the agreement, and is the route for anything that has to cross.
Without that, every manager improvises separately, and you find out what was promised at the point somebody expects it.
When managers change
The new manager inherits a person, a provider and none of the context, because none of it was written down.
Make the handover include the card, the working-arrangement note and whatever has been agreed. This is the single most reliable point of failure over a long engagement.
What a briefing cannot cover
The judgement calls. A manager will meet a situation that is not on the card — a person in distress, a request that is half about work and half about employment, a conversation that turns without warning.
The useful instruction for those is not a rule but a default: say less, promise nothing, and come and ask. Managers who know they have somewhere to take an unclear situation do that; managers who think they are on their own decide it themselves, which is how most of this section's problems begin.