Among the many daily operations to undertake in conducting a successful business, safety management is irrefutably a top priority. Safety-conscious companies dedicate a great deal of effort to ensuring that their operations and people within it remain compliant. With the emergence of technology, the EHS industry has become resourceful in developing frameworks to most effectively tackle safety related hurdles along the way in a manner that is fast and accurate. All the way from risk mitigation protocol to internal policy compliance, businesses are beginning to implement digital solutions to solve all aspects of contractor management.
As a safety-conscious professional, it is your responsibility to diligently follow up with regulations and requirements and to nurture a productive workspace for your employees and external contractors. You may be contemplating your options or have even spoken to a few service providers to determine what is a right fit for you and your business. Are you thinking of investing in a digital solution to make this part of your job easier? If so, read this guide to learn more about when is the right time to take the leap and digitize your contractor safety management process.
Here are the 5 major signs that you need contractor management software:
- Managing Safety Protocol is Becoming a Full-Time Job
With the extensive follow-up and communication requirement to track and manage your contractors, your responsibilities can quickly pile up and inevitably become a long list of past due commitments. Are you beginning to notice that your processes are taking up time and resources that you don’t have? Or perhaps you’re delegating less attention to essential tasks that would otherwise be at the top of your list. Either way, contractor management is not resourceful when attempted as a one-person job. Often, businesses may opt to delegate these responsibilities to a full-time EHS professional. Even then, the many intricacies of safety management can prove to be a real challenge to keep up with. This is why even businesses with dedicated safety professionals still use software solutions sitewide to achieve compliance.
2. You Have No Control or Visibility Over Operations
Perhaps some of the most instrumental tools you can have as a health and safety professional are the afforded benefits of full control and visibility. After all, how are you expected to make routine changes to your management process with no tangible insight to go off of? Data is an essential aspect of EHS, a solid contractor management process is one that is able to efficiently and quickly visualize relevant data to follow up on when needed. Furthermore, real-time visibility also helps in granting you full control over the trajectory of your compliance measures. Contractor safety management quickly becomes an overbearing task once you’re contributing a sizable effort with no means to show for it after the fact. It is time to digitize your process once you notice that a manual upkeep method is not providing you with a consistent and fully encompassing view of what operations are like at your organization.
3. Your Process is Scattered
You’ve got an idea of what required credentials, regulations, and practices you are expected to upkeep, but putting them into practice is a different story. Often, conducting this process on your own through means of manual organization can make your management feel scattered and inconsistent, only further contributing to the extensive admin hours it takes to complete such tasks. Additionally, a scattered process can contribute to increased risk for you and your employees. A sign that your process is scattered is when projects are frequently left incomplete for long periods of time and tracking the progress of your compliance efforts quickly becomes just as time intensive as implementing said efforts.
4. It’s Getting Difficult to Track Requirements
As your business scales and your contractor activity grows, so will your list of requirements. From aspects like pre-qualification all the way to credential verification, this could seem like an infinite list to tackle. Businesses often seek out other options to better their processes once they realize that they’re no longer able to monitor and track ever-evolving changes with confidence. When conducted manually, this could potentially look like a hefty (error-prone) spreadsheet that is difficult to understand and offers no integration to make updates as they happen.
5. Safety Audits Cause a Stressful Time
Let’s face it, a health and safety audit is an anxiety-inducing event even if we have diligently followed up with our safety efforts the entire time beforehand. We can’t help but think we’ve missed something, that’s why digital solutions help by presenting us with an accurate depiction of our compliance levels to quell our doubts prior to an audit. However, having to scramble before a safety audit is a tell-tale sign that you need to invest in contractor management software. Having this solution beforehand helps in ensuring that you’re hitting your compliance targets throughout the entire year, not only in preparation for an audit.
When’s the Right Time?
Investing in contractor management software is never a bad idea, it can be a handy asset in your toolbox to solve for compliance. If any of these five points sound like what you’re experiencing, now may be the perfect time to invest in an innovative software solution to help you level up your performance as a safety professional. Having this tool on hand will ensure that your time and resources are utilized in the most efficient manner possible and that your efforts are organized, actionable and provide an accurate depiction of your safety management system as a whole. Having the right software is beneficial to both the hiring organization and third–parties they work with. It helps assure that both parties are on the same page at all times and are working together for a mutually beneficial cause. Streamlining your contractor management efforts into an all-encompassing solution can afford hiring organizations with the advantage of accurate reporting and industry-standard benchmarks to minimize risk.
Faris Badaro is Junior Marketing Specialist for Contractor Compliance, a Saas software for contractor management, specializing in lead generation, content marketing and email marketing.