Contractor safety is an important subject in many industries. From mining to energy to pharmaceuticals, creating a safe workplace for contractors is paramount, not just for worker health, but for business success as well.
7 Key Insights to Consider in Creating a Safer Workplace for Contractors
- Companies are increasingly relying on outsourcing to meet operational needs and improve financial performance. But outsourcing also introduces new risks.
- Prequalification of contractors is critical in reducing safety risk and creating long-term stability.
- As aging workers retire, better succession planning is needed to address a growing skills gap.
- Health and safety should be driven from the top and applied equally to contractors and employees.
- Canadian companies operating abroad are under greater pressure to comply with Canadian regulations.
- As millennials rise through the ranks, traditional corporate values will change.
- Companies need to enact stronger measures in controlling the influence of drugs and alcohol.
This brand-new whitepaper, Introducing Zero Harm: 7 Key insights to consider in creating a safer workplace for contractors, is built on the perspective and experience of health and safety leaders. It discusses challenges and reflections and offers solutions and best practices on how to improve worker health and safety.
Download the white paper now and read on to learn more about the issues at play.
The State of Workplace Safety
With growing societal and legal pressures on corporations to be more socially sustainable, companies operating in heavy industries must raise their safety performance standards and approaches.
While some enhancements are linked to stricter regulations, others are attributed to advancements in technology that has made safety programs easier to develop, monitor, and sustain. And some say it all begins with hiring the right people.
Fundamental to the progress has been strategic upgrades across all stages of contractor management, especially qualification and selection. These two stages provide the best opportunity to embed safety into the corporate culture proactively and instills a strong sense of confidence at the procurement stage regarding the future safety performance of the contractor. It is also at these stages that the safety influence potential is greatest.
Despite the progress, occupational health and safety (OHS) risk management of contractors is still often regarded as primarily a legal and contractual consideration between the hiring company and the contractors.
A Shift in Thinking
When contractors are hired they agree to adhere to safety laws and guidelines and perform their job duties safely. But this ‘tick the box’ approach doesn’t improve safety standards in any meaningful way and it doesn’t encourage safety-centric coordination and alignment between key stakeholders.
Due to inconsistent follow-through and execution, a lack of a prevailing safety culture, and the costs associated with proper management and oversight, contractors across industries still engage in insufficiently controlled dangerous activities. This puts their lives at risk and compromises the safety and well-being of their colleagues.
This signals a misalignment between the safety philosophy of the contractors and that of the hiring organization’s own culture. When the investment is not made at the qualification stage and safety is not prioritized from the outset, embedding it into subsequent stages of contractor management becomes difficult. By the time contractors are onboarded and safety protocols are executed in the field, the corporate tone has already been established.
Reversing this Overriding Culture Is a Tall Order.
A fundamental shift in thinking and operating philosophy must take place if safety performance is to improve further. Organizations need to elevate occupational health and safety from being a legal and contractual issue to making it a core business objective.
This white paper guides organizations on making this shift in thinking by identifying best practices, challenges, and key considerations regarding contractor management and worker health and safety.
