Key Takeaways:
- Adjust how you onboard contractors
- Identify what metrics are most valuable to your business
- Automate as many processes as possible
- Recognize the value of data analytics
- Integrate new tools with your existing processes
- Reward safety and penalize noncompliance
- Implement a contractor management software
If you’ve been managing contractors for some time, you may have grown complacent with your program. And that’s understandable. Contractor management is a complex task, and it can be challenging to continually find new ways to make things more efficient. But the moment you stop innovating is the moment your contractor management program will begin to fail you. Depending on your organization and the size of your contractor management team, a reboot might vary in scope from something as simple as updating your checklists to implementing an entirely new system. Regardless of where you are now or how many people are involved with your current approach, take these 8 suggestions as opportunities to give your program a much-needed upgrade.
1. Change How You Onboard New Contractors
When your safety systems need a reboot, it is often best to start at the beginning of your funnel. This means making changes to your contractor onboarding strategy. The efficiency of the first step in your process lays the foundation for everything else that follows. Before you begin to implement changes in your contractor onboarding process, first ask yourself why you are doing it. Is it to save time, free up resources, or increase safety? If you answer yes to any of these questions, then you’re on the right track. The changes you make should be based on your intentions in order for them to be measurable. There are a number of changes you can make to improve this process such as:
- Implementing a prequalification process to mitigate delays.
- Using contractor management software to streamline onboarding.
- Ensuring that onboarding requirements are communicated prior to arrival.
2. Define Valuable Business Metrics
If you’re conducting large scale operations at a big organization, deadlines are tight and things move very quickly. So chances are that you’ve never had the opportunity to truly assess what business metrics are most valuable to your company. However, safety professionals should make it a priority to address what success looks like in regard to a safe working environment. Determining these metrics will allow you to make adjustments to your contractor management program that relate directly to your goals. To do so, you must begin by answering a set of questions designed to clearly assess your company’s most pertinent objectives:
- How much time is my company spending on administrative tasks?
- Does the time of onboarding affect the speed of operations?
- How compliant are our worksites? Are noncompliance notices disrupting operations?
- What liabilities and risks is our company facing?
3. Automate As Much As Possible
When rebooting your contractor safety management, you’re often doing so in the pursuit of time and efficiency. So what better way to achieve those things than with automation? The journey to compliance includes a breadth of daily tasks that are seemingly never ending. Furthermore, many of those tasks are done through manual administration that takes resources away from valuable company time. Automation technology is a method that completes, tracks, and updates contractor management processes automatically so you don’t have to. This is why it is best that you try to automate as many tasks as you can.
4. Use Data Analytics
Health and safety is a fluid subject, so changes within it are ever-evolving. Having the right data on your side can be powerful in ensuring that you never fall behind. If you’re ever feeling overwhelmed and lost within your processes, a lack of actionable data is often to blame. If you’ve found yourself in this position before, chances are that your safety program is ready for an upgrade. Adding a layer of data analytics to your process will allow you to quickly view the level of safety of operations, assess the risk that third-party vendors bring to your company, and audit compliance at any time.
5. Integrate With Your Existing Tools
Operations at any company are constantly evolving and progressing, so it’s only right that your contractor management program keeps up too. Oftentimes, organizations will integrate new processes, technologies, and workforces, but fail to ensure that their health and safety strategy is connected to all these processes. To give your program a quick and valuable boost, ensure that you integrate it with all existing processes currently in place at your organization.
6. Reward Excellence
In many cases, complacency in safety can stem from the workforce. This issue can quickly cause your contractor management program to fall short. To quickly mitigate complacency, you can determine different ways to reward your workforce safety and performance. This can help incentivize your workforce to continue to keep up with what is expected of them, avoiding unnecessary risk. This can be achieved through multiple ways such as:
- Monetary incentives
- Performance incentives
- Team building exercises
7. Address Noncompliance
Notices of noncompliance are all too common, but many organizations lack the knowledge of how they can properly address them. Noncompliance offenders are often left unaccounted, further contributing to a cycle that brings on nothing but trouble. To avoid falling short, your company should draft a plan that addresses how they will deal with perpetrators of risk in your organization. This plan should include aspects such as:
- How will notices of noncompliance be communicated?
- What happens to contractors that are in violation of safety requirements?
- How will you keep track of and identify safety violations?
8. Use Contractor Management Software
Truly the most effective way to put together a solid safety program is through the use of contractor management software. A digital solution like this can help you align your efforts and organize them onto a single source. With such softwares, companies are granted a complete view of their organization’s safety program, a way to automate time-consuming tasks, and a method to keep tabs on compliance levels. If you’re looking to elevate your outdated management processes, a digital solution could be what you’re looking for to tie everything together.
