Staffing is a three-way partnership between the employer, the job candidate, and the employment/recruitment agency. Communication is critical to all three to prevent accidents and incidents. This is advantageous to all three parties. It saves money by not eating up deductibles, driving up insurance costs, and reducing production. The right business partner improves safety if they have a strong risk management program.
A risk management program is built to anticipate accidents and incidents. Preventive control measures are taken to eliminate or mitigate the negative impact of potential problems. Control measures are often related to training. So what’s needed is an employment or recruitment agency that excels at training for risk management.
As advocates for the job candidates, the employment and recruitment agency helps the employer. Many times in day-to-day operations employees get used to working with less than perfect equipment. There are rules, but in the “real world” and everyone knows that the machine guard is missing, the brakes on the vehicle don’t work, or that workarounds must be taken to get the job done.
If the employment agency has a strong risk management program, then they can help the employer by identifying these hazards. The employment agency, working with its trained job candidates, identifies abnormal situations and can help develop preventive steps. The preventive steps, called “control measures”, must meet three criteria. They must be:
- Positive – Something must be DONE.
- Identifiable – You must be able to SEE that it’s been done.
- Measurable – And you should be able to MEASURE that it has been done.
Let’s say a stairwell is a tripping hazard because it’s poorly lit and has irregular steps. All of the “regular employees” have learned to live it. But if the employment agency has trained job candidates and a good risk management program, then they will identify the hazard and recommend control measures. Two control measures might be that new lighting is installed and signs placed identifying the hazard. These are positive, can be identified and they can be measured (and much cheaper than a worker’s comp claim).
So working together, employment and recruiting agencies, as advocates for their job candidates, can improve an employer’s safety by aiding them with a good risk management program. Want to reduce accidents? Find a business partner with a great risk management program and a strong training program.
