8600-335 Understand How to Manage Contracts and Contractors in the Workplace

Unit Overview

8600-335 Understand how to manage contracts and contractors in the workplace is a unit within the ILM Level 3 module that focuses on building the ability of the leader to effectively handle contracts within the organisation. The organisations require various employees and other service providers who could be recruited through the use of contracts. As such, contracts have become a critical part of the modern organisation through which they can receive services from external institutions and service providers.

This makes understanding the principle of contract and establishing effective contract management practices an important aspect within the organisation to ensure that it can achieve these goals and objectives through effectively managing contracts and contractors. 8600-335 Understand how to manage contracts and contractors in the workplace is a unit that helps to support the process of utilising contracts in ensuring the organisation receives effective and efficient services from external providers.

The unit aims at ensuring that there is an understanding of the approaches and strategies that can be put up within the organisation in alignment with organisational policies and practices to effectively manage contracts and contractors recruited within the organisation. The unit builds an understanding of procedures and policies that may be implemented to ensure the contractor is able to meet organisational standards and requirements. The unit is taught in 8 hours of guided learning and contributes 2 credit values towards the completion of ILM Level 3 module.

Suitability of the Unit

Managing contracts and contractors within the workplace is the duty of leaders. It is important that leaders at different levels understand the principles of effectively managing contracts and contractors to ensure that they facilitate the achievement of the goals and objectives of the organisation using the contractors. 8600-335 Understanding how to manage contracts and contractors in the workplace is, therefore, a critical leadership and management course that helps the leaders to acquire the relevant and basic information they require to effectively handle the contractual agreements and procedures within the organisation.

This unit is designed to meet the learning needs of first-line managers, junior managers and team leaders within the organisation. These leaders are responsible for overseeing specific practices and projects within the organisations. They are responsible for facilitating contractual work by examining the activities of contractors and fulfilment of contractual agreements within the workplace. This involves being able to communicate and provide support to the contractors, controlling and monitoring the works of contractors and identifying whether the activities of the contractors are authorised and safe.

 The unit is, therefore, suitable for enabling this leader within the primary levels of operation within the organisation have the ability to fulfil their responsibility and mandate. The unit is also applicable to the top and middle managers who enter contractual agreements. It can be used to provide these levels of leadership with information to ensure that they are able to develop effective contractual agreements that contribute to achieving organisational goals and objectives. External consultants in charge of supporting contractual engagements for the organisation are also suited to this unit to ensure they build their information and understanding of the management of contracts.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the unit, the learner should be able to:

• Outline the contract management practices, procedures and tools that are implemented within their organisation and are applicable in their area of responsibility

• Describe a contact that they have played an active role in managing and explain the experience of managing the contract

• Identify the effective approaches to communicate relevant information with contractors within the workplace

• Identify the forms of information that a contractor will require to ensure they can effectively and safely perform their functions within the organisation

• Identify and use examples to explain a control tool that can be used to monitor and evaluate contractors work

• Use examples to explain approaches that could be used to stop the contract from working when the work is deemed to be unsafe, unauthorised or causing business disruptions

Key Learning Areas

8600-335 Understand how to manage contracts and contractors in the workplace is a unit that focuses on boosting the ability of the leaders to effectively handle contracts within the organisation. Some of the main areas of learning that help to accomplish the goals of the unit include:

Understanding Contracts

This area of learning helps the learners to understand the principles that guide the development f contracts. The learners are introduced to contract law and its implications in the process of effectively issuing contracts to external service providers and employees who are employed on the basis of contracts. The learners are also introduced to different types of contracts that can be used within the organisation to achieve specific projects, as well as situations where each type of contract is effective.

Learners are also taught effective approaches that can evaluate the contract management approaches, scale and scope of the contracts hence ensuring that they are able to positively contribute to the organisation. Lastly, this area of learning helps to understand cases of monitoring and evaluation of contracts, including the rewards for delivery and penalties that can be used to reinforce performances.

Managing Contractors

This area of learning helps to ensure that contractors are able to achieve the designed roles and duties based on the agreements of the contract. Ti involves the types of information that should be provided to support the activities and functions of the contractors as well as the contractors who are commonly used within the workplace.

 In this area, learners are provided with training on control tools for contracts such as permit to work, risk assessment, method of assessment, security ID and criminal checks which are essential in ensuring the contractor is qualified to work on the set duties. It also helps to identify robust contractor selection processes as well as methods to provide them with a permit-to-work system that ensures they can contribute to the organisations.

Evaluation

This unit is evaluated using a written assessment. The learners are required to complete a 2500-3000 word written assessment that shows the mastery of the theoretical and practical concepts that have been learned within the unit. Supervised practice and simulated exercise can be used in the formative phase to ensure the ability to apply learned concepts.