Getting Contractor Management in Order
If you are looking for a strategy to help you keep track of your third-party workforce, then this is the post for you!
Contractors are a great way to expand your workforce without having to pay for the overhead that comes with hiring employees. They are an integral part of any business. However, no matter the size of your company, it is crucial that you take preventative measures to reduce risk, improve safety and promote compliance with all of your contractors. To ensure that every contracted company and their employees comply with the safety measures you have put in place, it is vital to have a checklist or contractor management software to keep track.
What is a Contractor Management Checklist?
This checklist can be used as a tool that safeguards a business from unnecessary compliance risk while also helping to keep workers safe on-site. This checklist has a series of requirements that need to be satisfied in order for a contractor to complete work for your business, such as certificates of insurance and health and safety prerequisites.
An effective compliance checklist is one of the fundamental components of your contractor management process. Without a checklist that is followed rigorously, there could be people on-site completing work who are unqualified or improperly insured. If one of these people gets hurt or causes damage, this becomes a massive liability for your organization. There are also internal and external audits that will require documentation that every third-party company/employee is qualified to be there. As someone working in compliance or EHS, it is your responsibility to ensure that all policies are abided by; but what is typically on this checklist?
Items To Include in your Contractor Checklist
Every company is going to have a different checklist because no two companies are alike. When you create or modify this checklist it should strongly consider the types of contractors you have on site, what work they are completing and what is required in your industry vertical. To simplify it even further, this list must ensure that every hire and their employees are capable and qualified to complete the tasks outlined as per your agreement.
Here are some of the most frequent subjects that are addressed in a comprehensive checklist:
· Training and onboarding
· Acknowledgement and sign off of your organization’s policies and practices
· Verification of contractor credentials
· Proof of insurance certificate (COI)
· Any COVID-19 policies including vaccination status
· Individual contractor employee compliance checks
This list can be divided into smaller subsections depending on the type of work being completed, by facility, stage of the process or any other configuration that benefits your organization. If these are long term relationships, renewal dates must be included to ensure that expired documentation is renewed in a timely manner.
Keeping track of and monitoring safety practices constantly is an effective way to reduce the risk that third parties pose to your organization. Your checklist might also include the following items:
· Procedures for ensuring safety (fire exits, eye wash stations, material handling)
· Emergency procedures
· Site inspections
· Incident reporting procedures
· Acknowledgement of site policies
· Training and tests for any new employees coming on-site
Managing the Checklist
As someone who has been tasked with compliance strategy and risk management, you know that there are an ever-expanding number of requirements to fulfill. Managing this checklist can be very demanding for any organization, regardless of size. If you have 100 contractors with 10 employees each and 10 mandatory requirements to collect, that’s a lot of renewal dates, emails and chasing people for missing documentation! That’s only for one small facility, imagine this process being done manually for a company with 10,000 contractors at two dozen facilities. It simply cannot be managed properly using a combination of paper documents, online spreadsheets, emails, faxes, carrier pigeons and chasing individual employees for expired certifications. Not only that, but if this list isn’t monitored constantly it quickly becomes an insurmountable challenge (not to mention a massive liability for your organization).
It is easy to see that to properly track this information manually with spreadsheets and file folders, you will need significant time and resources with people at every facility tasked with this process. It’s obvious that the admin burden of this initiative alone isn’t sustainable. So how are other companies handling this you might ask? The answer is simple, they go digital and use contractor management software.
Going Digital
Instead of relying on spreadsheets and file folders to facilitate your checklist, which inevitably leads to you chasing people for credentials and documents, you can go digital with your safety program. A streamlined digital solution is how leading health and safety teams tackle this time-consuming process. Imagine every facility is able to collect, track, requalify and store this information in real time while also gaining compliance insights and reducing risk, all from a single source of truth. There are several software options available to you, with varying costs to you and your contractors. Each of these tools also have different implementation timelines and special features.
One of the available solutions is... us! Contractor Compliance is the most affordable option available to you and your third-party workforce. We handle setting up your current process (digitally) and onboard your contractors for you. It can be fully operational in two phone calls. Yes, it is actually that easy! In a matter of minutes, you will be able to instantly monitor corporate compliance levels, drill down on specific contractors that are creating risk and pull reports ahead of upcoming audits. Contractor Compliance can be configured by facility, state, role etc. and beyond document collection, tracking and requalification, we can also accommodate training, tests and policy acknowledgements. For example, if you are suddenly required to collect COVID-19 vaccination information and negative test results, we can easily add this logic to your existing process. This is the customizable, flexible, powerful and affordable solution you’ve been waiting for!
Over To You...
A Contractor Management Checklist is a must-have set of steps that every EHS team in a regulated industry must follow with third parties. Contractor safety and compliance risk don’t just affect the EHS team though, it is a company-wide initiative that directly impacts every arm of the business. We have outlined what a typical checklist includes and demonstrated why this process is nearly impossible to do manually and also provided a digital solution to help with this process. Now it’s up to you to consider your options and set up a product demo with our team of experts. Thousands of companies are going digital every month because there is no longer a reasonable barrier to adopting this process. Let us help you make a compelling case to your leadership team on why now is the right time to automate and streamline this process with Contractor Compliance' software.
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