Managing contractors made easy with digital

Managing contractors well is tricky when you’re running a busy workplace. How do you minimise your risk and make sure everyone on site – including external contractors – are safe and compliant?

The answer is digital. Ditching paper-based processes in favour a digital HSE app or software system is a must in modern business. You gain the advantage over competitors who are still wedded to spreadsheets and paper files. You reduce wasted time and boost productivity.

This is because using a digital system for managing contractors is much easier and more effective. Contractors can be pre-approved for access by you, by checking and verifying their permissions ahead of time. You can be sure they meet all the necessary criteria. And they can have received and acknowledged your essential site induction ahead of time.

This means you avoid the bottleneck on arrival because there is no waiting around. And with real-time clocking in and out, location monitoring, and permit to work requests all delivered digitally, you can be sure that everyone is working safely and compliantly. It is a smoother end-to-end process for everyone involved.

If you're looking for a contractor management solution that can help streamline your business processes and improve safety, consider investing in a digital system – such as Work Wallet – today. With the right tools, you can manage your supply chain more efficiently and reduce risks for all.

Why is managing contractors important?

Effective contractor management is a must for any business owner. Safety should always be a priority for professional contractors - but businesses also need to be aware of the dangers that unsupervised contractors can pose to your workers and workplace. That's why it's essential to have a robust contractor management system in place.

You must ensure the safety and compliance of your contractors, as well as your own workers and workplace. With good risk management, businesses can ensure that their projects run smoothly, on time, and within budget.

Using a digital contractor management system allows you to track contractor activity in real-time, and record activity online in one place. With these tools at your disposal, you can be confident that your contractors are working safely and efficiently at all times.

The basic principles and aspects you need to consider when selecting and managing contractors include:

• Accreditations and qualifications
• Experience
• Clear task parameters
• Permissions and authorisation
• Monitoring of work
• Sign-off
• Providing a safe, secure and comfortable working environment for all

We've gone into each of these areas in more depth previously. You can read more here. However, you must choose contractors who are competent, know what they need to do and how to do it, properly enabling them in your workplace. Additionally, you need to check progress effectively, and have a robust completion process.

Keep contractors informed

It's easy to think of contractors as being independent from your workplace. After all, they are self-employed, self-trained, and self-insured. But that doesn't absolve you - the commissioner of the work - from all responsibilities.

You still have to make sure your workplace is a safe environment for them to be in. You also have a significant role to play in making sure your contractor is not a hazard to employees, customers, and visitors who may be around.

Therefore, good communication is essential. It is best practice to make sure that contractors are as much in the loop as your employees about site-specific safety training and updates. Contractors are better informed and more attentive to hazards and risks, protecting others around them.

This is where digital tools for managing contractors come in handy. By connecting directly with contractor activity on-site, these tools can keep everyone informed and help you manage contractor management effectively. With the right system in place, you can trust (and check) that your contractors have all the information they need to do their job safely and compliantly.

Using a digital contractor management system keeps everyone informed in real-time. You will streamline your contractor management using these tools, and everyone benefits.

The importance of Permit to Work in managing contractors

Permit to Work is an essential part of contractor management. It helps ensure that all workers on site have the necessary permissions to carry out their tasks safely. If you track who is on site, safety risks and accidents are more easily avoided.

A Permit to Work process can be time consuming, receiving and responding to requests, tracking permissions and monitoring expiries. Paper files and Excel spreadsheets may suffice for the most basic of projects, but anything more will be likely to get out of hand quickly. It's time to ditch paper-based approaches for something much more simple and more sustainable.

That's why many businesses today are turning to digital solutions for managing contractors, which automate the Permit to Work process. With Work Wallet, for instance, you can manage requests immediately, responding in real time with information requests and approvals. Once you are confident your chosen contractor has supplied you with everything you need, and is competent to do the job, you can track progress and monitor permit expiries live.

Work Wallet enhances your capabilities for managing contractors

Work Wallet's health and safety software ensures contractor management is safe, efficient, and completely digital. You will streamline contractor management with our tools in place - being more effective, for the benefit of all.

Work Wallet gives you access to real-time contractor information, including clocking in/out times and location tracking, as well as permit expiry notifications. This means you can stay on top of contractor activity at all times, providing a safer work environment for everyone involved.

And with our powerful reporting features, you can also monitor contractor performance and compliance. Whether you need to assess contractor skills, check their credentials, or report on contractor activity for health and safety purposes - Work Wallet makes it easy.

Our flexible modular system is designed to fit the specific needs of your business, and we offer personalised support to help you get set up quickly. You choose and pay for the parts of our system that you want to use, when you want them. There are no costly tie-ins to bundles of features you do not need.

All this is available at low cost to you, with adaptable per-user-per-month fees starting from only £1.

So if you're looking for a simple, efficient way to manage your contractor management processes and keep everyone safe, look no further than Work Wallet.

View an online demo, or book a 1 to 1 live demo overview today.

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