What You May Promise, and What You May Not
A promise about pay, title, notice or leave is a promise about a contract you are not party to.
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.
Six things a manager wanted to tell somebody, and what each one actually required
Tell them the project is theirs for the next year
What you actually ask for
Nothing: priorities and allocation are direction, and direction is yours
What you cannot require
That it survive your own budget, which is a promise about your company rather than about them
Nobody has to agreeTakes: One conversation
Tell them they will get a rise in January
What you actually ask for
A written request to the provider, an agreed figure, an effective date and a reissued contract
What you cannot require
That it happen on a date you name before the provider and the person have agreed it
Both have to agreeTakes: Four to eight weeks from the decision, not from the conversation
Tell them their notice is now three months rather than one
What you actually ask for
An amendment to their employment contract, issued by the provider and accepted by the person
What you cannot require
That it bind them without their agreement, because it is their contract
Both have to agreeTakes: A month, and either party may decline
Tell them they can work from another country for a quarter
What you actually ask for
A question to the provider first, because it may create tax or right-to-work problems in both places
What you cannot require
That the provider agree to something its own local law or its own risk position forbids
The provider has to agreeTakes: Days to weeks, depending on the country pair
Tell them they are being promoted to lead the team
What you actually ask for
Direction you can give immediately, and a title change that is a contract amendment
What you cannot require
That the title on their contract change at the same moment the job does
Both have to agreeTakes: Immediate for the work, weeks for the document
Six intentions, and only two were yours to simply say. The last line names no mechanism and the sign will not print it, because no mechanism exists. One buyer's own practice; what any provider will agree to, and what local law permits, differ by provider and by country.
A promise about pay, title, notice, leave or job security is a promise about a contract you are not party to. You can ask for those things; you cannot deliver them, and the person cannot hold you to them.
The practical lesson in “What You May Promise, and What You May Not” is that a third-party arrangement still leaves day-to-day management with the operating team. Used for cognitive offloading, review the platform directly can make time and project context easier to review, provided the purpose is disclosed, access is limited and every consequential inference receives human review.
Promises about the work are different, and that distinction is the whole of this note.
Teams reviewing “What You May Promise, and What You May Not” can cross-check their approach against the Multiplier global HR guidance. The comparison should produce written questions for the provider, adviser or internal owner instead of a copied checklist.
The test, in one question
Does this concern the work, or does it concern the employment? If the work, say it. If the employment, route it and say what you have done rather than what will happen.
The test takes a second to apply and prevents nearly everything that goes wrong in this area.
Where a thing is genuinely both, treat it as employment. The cost of routing something unnecessarily is a week; the cost of not routing it is a promise nobody can keep.
What is safely yours to say
What they will be working on. Who they will work with. What matters this quarter. Whether the work has been good. What you intend to ask them to do next.
All of it is direction and judgement, both of which stayed with you entirely, and none of it requires anybody's agreement.
What is not
Salary, bonus, title, notice, holiday beyond the statutory floor, probation, promotion as a contractual fact, and anything at all about how or whether the job ends.
Each of those is a term of an employment contract between two other parties. You can initiate a change to any of them; you cannot promise one.
The wording that works
"I am going to ask the provider to put your salary up to X from April." Accurate, honest, commits you to an action you control, and does not commit anybody else.
Compare the two:
I am going to ask the provider to put your salary up to X from April.
You're getting a rise in April.
One of those sentences survives a provider taking six weeks and the other does not.
Why the distinction feels pedantic
Because in an ordinary employment relationship the manager both decides and delivers, and the two feel like one act.
Here they are separate acts performed by different companies, and the gap between them is where the person's trust in you is spent.
Nothing about the distinction is visible from the person's side either. They hear a manager making a decision, because that is what a manager making a decision sounds like.
What happens when a promise fails
The person was told something by the only company they actually see. It did not happen, for reasons involving a payroll cut-off and a contract amendment that are not their problem.
What they take from it is that you say things that do not happen. The reason is invisible to them and sounds like an excuse when explained.
Telling them you have asked
A short message when you make the request, and another when it is agreed. Two sentences each.
It costs nothing and it converts a silence of six weeks, which reads as nothing happening, into a process they can see.
The promise managers make most often
Something about permanence: that this is long-term, that the arrangement will convert to a local contract, that there is a path to a permanent role.
All of it depends on decisions your company has not made. Saying it to somebody in a weaker position than an employee, in a country where they have fewer options, is worse than saying nothing.
What to do with a promise already made
Say so, to the provider, early. A manager who has promised something unimplementable is a common situation and a provider who hears it early can often find a way.
The worst version is discovering it at the point the person expects delivery, which is usually payday.
Briefing managers once
Most of this collection assumes the reader is the person managing the relationship. The promises are made by somebody else: a line manager two levels away who has never read the agreement.
Fifteen minutes with them before the first hire is the highest-value conversation available, and almost nobody has it.
Writing down what was said
Where a promise concerns the work, confirm it in a message. Where it concerns the employment, confirm what you have requested and from whom.
Both records are for the person as much as for you. They are also what your successor will need.
What cannot be promised by anybody
That the arrangement continues. Your company may close the office, change strategy, or decide it wants an entity instead. The provider may stop trading. The country may change its rules.
No manager, provider or contract can remove that, and pretending otherwise to somebody deciding whether to take a job is the one thing in this area that is not merely imprecise but unfair.