If you engage contractors, you’re no doubt aware of the increased risks they bring to your business. They are less familiar with your day to day processes and safety practices, than your employees and are often not subject to the same controls. However, to date, some contractors have been more high-risk than others.

Contractor compliance is a complex part of contractor management that ensures contractors and suppliers are adhering to the specific requirements of their clients. As an organisation that engages contractors, you need to have a robust compliance program in place to minimise the financial and legal risks of working with contractors.

When it comes to managing your contractors, it’s no secret that successful engagement outcomes are driven by strong relationships. In spite of your differences, both on and off-site, you need to work together cohesively if your project is to run smoothly.

Managing contractors, especially when you engage a large number of them, can be a complex and challenging undertaking. It is essential that your legal obligations are met, and that you keep a record of all relevant documentation required to prove this. At a minimum, you need to ensure they are competent, licenced and insured.

In this day and age, risk management is considered by many an essential skill for every leader. Identifying risks, assessing risks and simply facilitating a risk management culture within an organisation are vital. Standards, controls and tools all have an important place, as they show that organisations and their people are focused on risk.

When a serious safety incident occurs in your workplace, what happens next is vital. Your workers need to understand safety protocols and have the capability to carry out a safety response plan that will attend to injured workers, secure the site and ensure the incident is correctly reported and communicated.

On the surface, achieving contractor compliance might seem fairly straightforward. Surely all you have to do is make sure that all contractors are working as they should in line with your organisation’s requirements. Simple right? However, if you’ve ever hired contractors, then you’ll know that compliance management is far from simple.

Whether you’ve been working with contractors for some time, or are in the early phases of considering it, the truth is most organisations will need some additional help with their management. The independent workforce is here to stay; it allows businesses to meet the needs of varying workloads and to temporarily engage specialised services.

Engaging contractors to provide services for your business carries with it a certain level of risk. Not only do you need to have confidence in their ability to complete the task competently, but you also need to be assured that all their employees are working in a safe and professional manner.

Hiring contractors has become commonplace for many organisations to fulfil both varying workloads and skill-specific requirements. In Australia, 23% of employers report engaging contract workers, of which 44% of cases are used in short-term, specialised projects.

Selecting the right contractors is one of the most complicated aspects of contractor management. It explains why many large organisations devote entire departments to it.

All workplaces must fulfil a number of criteria under the law in order to keep their employees, contractors, visitors, or anybody else who may be on the premises safe. Breaking compliance can not only endanger lives but can also come with severe legal penalties.

The process of engaging contractors comes with its fair share of administrative overhead. As required by Australian WHS legislation, contractor documentation (qualifications, insurances, WHS systems) needs to be verified for compliance, then tracked and shared between departments involved in the engagement process.

Safe Work Australia statistics show that since 2005 serious injuries in the workplace have fallen by 29%, with fatalities falling 49% since 2007, when they were at their peak. These reductions can be largely attributed to a greater emphasis on health and safety practices by both companies and individuals, combined with more stringent legal requirements.

The banking and financial sectors have recently come under intense scrutiny regarding the extent, or lack thereof, of accountability, that the organisation and senior management face in assessing risk factors within their industry.