As we wind down 2015 and look ahead to 2016, I have written in this space before about how this is a great time to look back over the year that was, take lessons from what happened and work to be stronger and better as we look forward to make goals for the year to come.

[Image courtesy of The Natural Step Canada from Flickr via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of The Natural Step Canada from Flickr via a Creative Commons license]

This is also a great time to provide some reminders about how things should be done, or even to present some new information that may have been learned over the past year. After all, life is always a learning opportunity, as long as we are open to it every day.

In this vein, this is a good time to put forth some notes about temporary or contract workers among your staff. We all know that the world economy has been slow to recover from the big financial crash of nearly a decade ago. However, it has come back to the point that many of us have hired temporary or contract workers – just enough business that we need more hands, but still not enough to add people to the payroll full-time with full benefits.

While these temp workers are not official employees of yours, they still should expect and receive the same safety training that the full- and part-time employees receive. After all, if something happens to them on your worksite, your company may still be liable and responsible even though they are contract workers.

With that in mind, my friends at Professional Safety magazine published a brief in the November 2015 issue about contract labor and safety, based on a study by the Campbell Institute that discussed five key steps in a contractor’s “life cycle” that help set up safe work habits and practices:

  1. Pre-approval. This is partly about the contractor’s skill set to be able to do the work, but it is mainly about the contractor’s own safety record in previous similar jobs. Has this contractor been involved in incidents before, and what were the factors behind the incident? Was it the worker not being safe, or negligence on the part of the employer?
  2. Risk assessment. This is before the contractor starts work. The employer checks the risks of the task being performed, juxtaposes that with the skill level of the contractor and determines whether additional safety measures or steps are needed to be implemented, in order to provide the safest possible working situation for the contractor.
  3. Training camp. Contractors should always get the same basic training and orientation as the regular employees. And if they are working in confined spaces, heat, heights or some other specialized environment, they probably should either be certified or get certified before you send them into that work.
  4. Observance. Supervisors should never just let contractors to their own devices even after the first three steps are covered. Regular checks on performance and adherence to safety protocols is a sound business practice.
  5. Exit. This refers to evaluating the work performed once the contractor is done with the task. Evaluating the worker’s safety adherence, the quality of the work overall and getting feedback from the worker about any risks that may have appeared that were not initially accounted for would help make the task even safer and provide good information to the company and the contractor if the relationship continues or its resumed in the future.

Recognizing the five phases of a contractor’s “life” with your company and taking the steps to address each phase from a perspective of safety for the worker and for the future, can make for a superior safety record for the company, and make the company one that contractors will want to work for in the future. For more information about this, you can check out this link.