Injuries and Illness

6 Steps to Protect Contract Workers – And to Protect You from Them


For a variety of reasons, part-time, temporary, and contract workers are at higher risk of occupational injuries and illnesses than workers in traditional work situations. Here are six ways you can help protect them – and yourself.


Yesterday’s Advisor told you about studies showing that contingent workers (an umbrella term for part-time, temporary, and contract workers) are at higher risk of occupational injuries and illnesses than workers in traditional full-time positions.


There are a number of logical reasons for this group’s higher risk of injury, according to researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH). They include:



  • Outsourcing of the more hazardous jobs
  • Lack of experience and familiarity with operations in a dangerous workplace
  • Inadequate safety training and protective equipment
  • Limited access to preventive measures such as medical screening programs



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A large segment of contingent workers found in many workplaces are contract workers. These workers are different from other contingent workers because a contractor you bring in — rather than you, the employer — is responsible for them and their safety.


But regardless of who bears ultimate legal responsibility, OSHA’s General Duty Clause can be interpreted to say that you need to do everything in your power to protect everyone in your workplace.


To start with, make certain assumptions about contractors when discussing safety policies, especially when small contractors (10 or fewer workers) are involved, says Mark Haskins, CCP and principal engineer with Practical Safety Solutions in Old Lyme, CT. These include:



  • The contract workers do not have a formal safety and health program.
  • They do not have formal safety training programs for their workers.
  • Their workers may have widely divergent experience levels, due to high turnover.
  • Their knowledge and understanding of OSHA or state workplace safety rules will likely be inconsistent.

If these assumptions are true — even if only some of the time — how can you protect everyone involved? An article in Safety.BLR.com outlines six steps Haskins says can bolster safety compliance when working with contractors.


1) Include safety requirements in the contract. Put the safety requirements in the contract, even if only to state that the contractor must comply with OSHA requirements. If the contractor does not follow safety rules, you can force compliance or stop work for breach of contract.


2) Set the safety compliance ground rules up-front, during orientation or before they start work.


3) Share accountability. While an accident caused by a contract worker may not legally be your responsibility, it’s still your problem. Don’t leave safety compliance problems to the contractor to solve alone.




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4) Offer assistance. This might include explaining all hazardous conditions or processes during the initial project orientation and highlighting any rules and restrictions, such as hot-work permit requirements, lockout/tagout, and confined spaces situations and needs.

5) Document communications with contractors. Give the contractor(s) a document or form to sign when resolving specific safety problems or for conducting inspections.


6) Read OSHA’s Multi-Employer Citation Policy. OSHA has published an enforcement and compliance directive (CPL 02-00-124, December 10, 1999) that lays out its citation policy for multi-employer worksites, which includes contractors.


Whether summer interns, contract workers, or other temporary help, most contingent workers will only be in your workplace for a relatively short time. And that only adds to the urgency of getting them up to speed on your organization’s safety policies and practices as quickly as possible.


A terrific tool for doing just that is BLR’s 7-Minute Safety Trainer, which includes 50 prewritten meetings that deal with every aspect of safety you’d want or need to train on, in a format designed to be taught in as little as 7 minutes. You can view a complete table of contents here, but among the topics are:


 • Confined spaces
 • Electrical safety
 • Fire safety/response
 • HAZCOM
 • Machine guarding and lockout/tagout
 • Material handling
 • PPE use and care
 • Housekeeping/slips, trips, and falls
 • and dozens more


In addition to the lesson materials, every meeting module includes a detailed trainer’s guide, a handout, and a quick quiz with answers. Just make as many copies as needed of the handouts and quizzes, and you’re ready to train. You can view materials from a sample module here.


And just as important, when new or changed regulations compel new training topics or training needs to be freshened, the program ships new meetings every quarter. This service is included in the program price, which averages just over a dollar a working day. In fact, this is one of BLR’s most popular safety programs.


If you’d like to personally evaluate 7-Minute Safety Trainer and see how it can build safety awareness, we’ll be happy to send it to you for 30 days, on a no cost, no obligation trial basis. Just click here and we’ll arrange it.


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