Published 13 Apr in
Coping with Contractors: Health & Safety Management
Businesses across almost all industry sectors are turning more and more now to contractors to supplement their workforce and bring in high-level technical expertise and skills when projects require it.
Given this growing trend, it’s now more important than ever before that workplace managers are aware of how contractors can affect health and safety regulations and protocols.
An Unusual Guest in your Home
Office-based contractors visiting your premises are often treated almost like a surprise guest in your home might be by most of the employees; they’re given a cursory tour to ‘show them where everything is’ and then more or less left to their own devices.
In performance venues and the like, this tour could even be less useful because there’s just too much to take in and too many shortcuts, stairs, ladders, and other paths to mentally map them all out on one tour.
In fact, in cases like these, it’s entirely possible for things to change so much that the person giving the tour doesn’t have 100% up to date information – although that’s also something you should be watching separately.
From an internal process standpoint, this may count as a full induction, but from a health and safety standpoint it’s significantly lacking.
In Case of Emergency
Always ask yourself: What happens if there’s an emergency or an accident while this person is on the premises?
Is a poster naming your first aiders enough for someone who only arrived today to find them if they need to? Do they know where your fire extinguishers are sited? The shortest route to an emergency exit? Are they familiar with any of your protocols for an emergency?
They won’t be – unless you’ve formally taken them through it all.
Contractor Management
We developed a contractor management training course to cover these specific problems and to simultaneously bring you up to code with the Management of Health and Safety at Work regulations.
We cover client and contractor responsibilities, contractor control, and the specifics of health and safety law related to contractors, making sure that when contractors are called in at your place of work, you can easily accommodate them in existing safety protocols or adapt to cover them as appropriate.
We highly recommend this course to department heads, supervisory roles, and – in the theatre – stage door keepers.