Contractor safety principles

13-07-2015

In recent years the Australian workforce has started to shift from long term employees undertaking various tasks to specialist contractors working across a number of organisations to achieve specific outcomes. This has the ability to have a strong effect on the safety culture of your business.

This presents many benefits to the organisation such as: Specialist expertise, non-payment during ‘off season’ work, competitive pricing, in some cases the payments may be claimed as a taxable expense (check with your accountant!) and no requirement to manage benefits normally attributed to employees.

The increase in the use of contractors has presented many interesting challenges for safety professionals, including: Work in some cases is rushed or hurried to meet other obligations, development of safety knowledge can be difficult and expensive to conduct, conflict can be higher onsite due to low incentive to allow others space onsite and incident management can be more difficult.

To this end, the safety system must include a robust contractor management system component, to ensure the new contractors are properly inducted into site specific system processes, relevant paperwork (i.e. licences, insurance detail) is recorded and employees actions are traceable. In addition to safety processes, we also recommend many organisations include quality mechanisms such as contractor review, to develop a preferred supplier list with a track history of performance, safety and otherwise.

The following are the key tips for any organisation considering the use of contractors:

  1. Set clear boundaries as to the project requirements when the job is offered;
  2. Establish a procedure by which you collect all relevant OHS/liability coverage before they are required to attend site, give plenty of time to review;
  3. Record all relevant details, develop a procedure to ensure this is done each time a contractor is added (i.e. as they are added to finance system);
  4. Create a robust induction, outlining their requirements onsite;
  5. Manage contractors based on the site safety requirements agreed at project inception;
    • If they said at the start they will undertake a daily toolbox, ask for records at the end of each week.
  6. Tie safety compliance requirements to payment measures to ensure agreements made are kept;

Use proactive metrics such as number of inspections per week or JSAs completed, NOT reactive metrics LTIFR or other punitive measure for reporting incidents as this develops a culture of non-reporting.

  1. Review all documentation and contractors at the end of each project or annually, whichever is more frequent;
  2. DO NOT instruct specialist contractors on their method to complete tasks, this is their responsibility as a contracting professional, even if you are a subject matter expert.
    • If your advice is followed and results in incident, you may be held co-liable.
    • If you see an unsafe activity, ask them to stop what they are doing (as long as it is safe to do so) record and provide feedback, this can be used in contractor reviews.
  3. DO NOT become complacent as the project progresses; and
  4. DO NOT spend all day looking over shoulders, consider yourself in an auditing capacity and simply ensure agreed documentation is produced and consult in person with contract managers regularly to develop good working relationships and ensure you remain approachable.

Of course, these things are more often easily said and difficultly done.  Contact SafetyZone OHS consulting to discuss the way a contractor management system could improve your business compliance.