I have a meeting with a member of my team next week to handover at the end of her fixed term contract and I’m wondering if I’m going to give her some honest feedback or just smile and close the conversation as quickly as possible.

Context: she started well but after she decided she wasn’t staying on at the end of the contract (we did discuss a perm role with her) she went a bit… odd. Her stakeholders found her increasingly challenging to work with and now we’re at the point where we’re quite glad to be getting rid, and no doubt she feels the same. Up until today I was going to politely thank her for her efforts and wish her good luck, but her response to me booking a handover meeting was to inform me that she won’t be coming in for the last 2 days of her contract and that actually she’d rather not be given any work to do in the last week either as she’d prefer to wind down.

Now I’m tempted to give her some fairly frank, but honest, feedback on her attitude and performance. Or I could stick to plan A and let her drift out the door without a fuss. What would STW do?

Plan A. Why stress over it when you can smile and wave bye.

Obviously if she gets chippy in the meeting then all bets are off!

When you say “won’t be coming in for the last 2 days of her contract” – owed leave or does she think it is the end of the summer term when you bring in your teddy bear and watch videos ?

Pile her high with meaningless work and micromanage the **** out of her for giggles.

That is tempting, although sadly I’ve got plenty of real work I need her to be doing.

See, I’d be tempted to clear my calendar and hers.

That’s probably why it is best that I am not a manager – I’m fairly sure there would be villagers with flaming torches as pitchforks if I was left in charge of a team.

Fixed term contract? End it a week early so she’s out of pocket a weeks pay. Though you shouldn’t have let it get that far if your responsible for her.

Day rate contractor or PAYE on a fixed term?
For the former you want your pound of flesh, for the latter I’d be less bothered – although allowing her to dictate what she does in the last week is an interesting one.

And as for honest feedback – how will it benefit you/your company?

she won’t be coming in for the last 2 days of her contract and that actually she’d rather not be given any work to do in the last week either as she’d prefer to wind down.

“would it be more convenient if we just ended the contract a week earlier?” Obviously only paying her for her attendance.

To be fair, she’ll be more disruptive if she was there so you’d be as well to pay her and not have her around, plus you get the added fun of taking a pass off her & escorting her off site

She doesn’t want any work?

If she’s a day rate contractor then tell her tomorrow that she’s not needed from Monday.

If she’s a day rate contractor then this attitude won’t help her get future contracts. Word gets out.
If she’s a fixed term employee then meh.

Actually, don’t give her any work at all for the last week. Revoke network access and insist she comes in every day. Nowt worse than sitting on your hands for 8 hours a day

Contractor = Don’t give a ****

Sitting on your hands for 8 hours? Never heard of 4g = job prospecting

True. But people could keep interrupting her…

If you tell her the truth , and she want accept the truth about her attitude, she will probaly claim discrimination etc and then the crap hits the fan.

and learn to use proper words not David Brent office talk

A because what’s the upside of B?

She clearly doesn’t give a toss. The no work for 2 days thanks is pretty obnoxious. My view would nothing, no thank you no feedback. If anyone asks for a reference for her just decline to give one or just provide dates of employment and job title and let people make up their own minds.

Keep the booking/appointment, but just don’t turn up. Fight fire with fire:-)

I’ll decide based on how the meeting goes but I’m minded to just let her leave with a minimum of fuss. Having said that she’s now been told in no uncertain terms that she’ll be working until the end of her contract. Believe it or not, part of me thinks giving her honest feedback would be to her benefit. If she keeps behaving like this in her next job it’s not going to do her any favours and if no-one’s ever told her then she might not realise it’s even an issue. On the other hand after next week she’s not my problem any more.

I think she needs to be given honest feedback – positive for her initial work – negative for the subsequent issues. She may or may not take it on board but it might spare the next company issues with her. If her previous employer had given suitable feedback the issue may never have occurred at your company.
I would also ensure that the feedback is passed back to the recruitment agency that sent her to you so that they can make decisions on her suitablity for future contracts.
If you don’t tell her that she’s got an issue you can’t very well tell the recruitment agency any different.

Rich.

Why not give her a link to this thread so she firstly knows your bad mouthing her and secondly she can defend herself,

Phil, no names have been mentioned and the OP seems to be quite factual.

She can “rather not have any work as she’d like to wind down” but she’d damn well be getting it from me.
If she failed to show then she wouldn’t be getting paid.
The feedback would be honest and concise too.
Note it down, couple of points from the stakeholders in there too so you aren’t shown to be hiding anything and then pass that on up the food chain.
If there was any fallout because of you not doing the above at a later date it’ll be worse than telling a leaving contractor the truth (wrapped nicely ) and them not liking it.

Dr slow she might be quite factual too, isnt a fact based thread factual when your only getting one side of the story.

Sounds like a total Diva to me. She has probably been given this feedback loads before but thinks everybody else is wrong…..

As someone coming to the end of a fixed term contract myself, I would welcome honest feedback so that I could improve my performance in the future however the woman you describe doesn’t sound like she gives two hoots so I’d just wave good bye and good riddance.