Question about corporate culture?

Question

I work in an environment where some people are career corporate employees and other people are contractors working for various vendors. There tends to be some resentment between the corporate employees and the contractors. This is just a few people. Sometimes contractors will apply for and get a job with our corporation. Once hired many of them get kind of vicious toward the other contractors. It's almost like the former contractors are the main ones propagating the resentment between the two groups. Any thoughts on why this may be or how to reduce the tensions?

Answer 1

Your sentence "There tends to be some resentment between the corporate employees and the contractors" is what got my attention.

I'm not sure if the tensions are a result of some imperative that contractors -once no longer contractors but now corporate employees- carry forward from some possible "bad blood" (so to speak) that may have existed among the contractors themselves before one eventually became a corporate employee.  

If so, the tensions you mention may actually have nothing to do with resentments between corporate employees and contractors, but may be more accurately reflected by noting it's newly hired contractors (under the protection of the corporate logo) who continue an already existing battle with other contractors.

It makes for an interesting research experiment to try and determine if there is any type of relationship between newly hired corporate employees (all) and contractors, or if the tensions only (or predominately) exist between ex-contractors now employed by the company and their one time colleagues (outside contractors).

It just seems difficult to accept that the possible reason for the tensions is because the former contractor now is a corporate employee and sudenly becomes Attila the Hun or Cruella de Ville.

I'm more apt to believe the tensions you are witnessing are already existing tensions -meaning these tensions existed outside the company and within thw realm of the contractor's world- that get manifested and illuminated once a contractor is "inside" and, for some reason, continues with the bad blood between contractors.

If my perspective has some ring of truth to it, a possible way to reduce the tension is a candid meeting with both parties present ... or, a shift of ex-contractor roles and responsibilities once s/he becomes part of the corporate culture.

If that doesn't work there's always the 90-day eval looming on the horizon.

Answer 2

Paying your dues is what it's about.  I've been on both sides, being a contractor and full-time union benefits.  There is no way of limiting this, the pure and simple thing to it is that people who come in need to pay their dues firsthand.