Get a service level agreement organised

Do not get ripped off in an outsource agreement the staff notice it first

The success of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) is also observed closely by your staff. We have seen in our outsource work that staff notice only too well whether their original employer is getting value or just being ‘ripped off’ and often have great fun when it does go wrong. This keen appraisal of how it works in practice impacts upon their own motivation and their relationships with both you and the outsource organisation. This excerpt from an interview gives an indication of how staff can view the situation:
The supplier had people who knew the sites, knew the systems, and so they put a sensible bid in, but the (clients) have always been screwed over contracts, we don’t have a contract team of professionals who know how to handle them (the suppliers). A classic one was colour printers in certain areas, that would not work, couldn’t get colour printing, and in the end there was a lot of banging on the table ‘you said in the contract that you would get us colour printing’ and the outsourcer turned round and said ‘the contract says we will get you colour printers, we did not say they would print in colour (laughs)! So my old company always got screwed on contracts because they didn’t understand what they were reading.

and it happens all the time…

Royston