Having a solid risk management plan is important for any industrial workplace and involves evaluating potential dangers, determining their financial impacts, and developing solutions to negate or minimize any negative consequences.
Managing risks with a permanent staff is one thing, but what considerations should be taken into account when bringing on temporary workforces — particularly when the stakes are so high?
Risk Management Basics
Let’s first review some risk management considerations and explain why they’re important:
Step 1: Determine the threats – Consider Murphy’s Law, which is the idea that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. What potential hazards are there at the worksite?
Step 2: Evaluate how certain threats make your critical assets vulnerable – Critical assets are anything that could drastically hinder your overall operations. This can include: manufacturing processes, company patents, financial data, workplace equipment, and more.
Step 3: Figure out the risks – Determine how likely any attack on your identified critical assets are and how bad any negative impacts might be.
Step 4: Develop a plan to reduce the risks – How can you avert disaster? What specific risk management processes and procedures can be put into place to protect against hazards? It’s important to emphasize regularly maintaining safety practices. To see how Strom can help with planning, see our Contingency Planning and Consulting services page.
How does risk management relate to temp workforces?
The protection of workers – both temporary and permanent – is directly related to managing any risks. In other words, the more you can guard against risks, the safer your workforce will be. If you’re an organization considering bringing in temp workers, consider the following:
- Communicate with the temporary labor provider – , thorough communications ensure that proper safety standards are established so that they may be put into place before the workers arrive onsite. This is extremely important.
- Ensure that training has occurred – Under federal OSHA guidelines, temporary workers must receive the same training in terms of safety that permanent workers receive. Everyone must follow the same safety procedures, and while temp workers may not be on the site for as long, it’s important for them to be just as informed as any permanent staff.
- Make sure all employees handle your critical assets correctly – Safeguarding and backing-up company patents, manufacturing processes, and controls/access points are highly important. While you may hope that every worker would be respectful of a company’s critical assets, in practice this is not always the case.
At the end of the day, both the host employer and the staffing agency have a dual responsibility to ensure that proper safety guidelines are being followed. The key here is to emphasize communication. If you are able to do this, averting disasters and maintaining proper risk management will be that much easier.
To learn how temporary staff can help your workplace, see our Temporary & Project Staffing services page.
