Understanding Safety Staffing: Bringing the Right Professionals to Your Jobsites

I mentioned at the top some do's and don'ts to keep in mind through this process.

Let's talk a little bit about that.

For the safety directors out there looking at a potential staffing partner, what are some things they should keep in mind?

Yeah, and of course, I mean, there's more than just one, but I'll start with probably the biggest one.

And I think it's not taking the time or only taking the time to to interview the company and kind of take their words at face value and not interview their processes.

So you could see a lot of marketing content.

Um, you know, Hey, we've got 10,000 resumes, rapid deployment, all these other kind of buzzwords and catchphrases.

And don't get me wrong.

We use those too.

And all those things are true.

Um, But a safety director who's evaluating somebody they actually want to partner with, they need to be looking a little deeper, kind of look under the hood.

What do your interviews look like? What types of questions are you asking? How do you evaluate your candidates? Do you evaluate their soft skills? How they communicate? What kind of leadership qualities do they have? How do you evaluate their technical knowledge? And based on my scope of work, how do you match? you know, the technical skills to what I'm actually going to have on my job site.

So how do you match those up? You know, secondly, you'll remember what kind of when you're doing an interview, you know, the interviewee is also kind of interviewing the interviewer in a way.

And a lot of times that's based on the questions that the interviewer asks.

So I'd say same thing, flip it on its head.

Evaluate a safety staffing company based on the information they seek from you.

So don't look for, like, if they're just saying, you know, how many people and when do you need them? This is very surface level.

And kind of signals that the company might just be a seat filler.

And we'll kind of get into that in a little bit too.

But you want somebody who's asking deeper questions.

What's your specific scope of work? What's your estimated manpower? What top three hazard areas do you foresee over the course of your project? What's the project management team look like on site? What's the support that this safety professional is going to have? Is there a lead on site? Is there a regional safety professional they can reach out to for support and assistance? And so really, two projects side by side can look the same on paper, but getting a deeper understanding of your specific needs and site is really going to lead to better outcomes.

And so So that's a big one.

And then number three, I think not providing enough support to the safety professional once they're on site.

And so there are a lot of companies that they just kind of put somebody out there.

You know, do they help when issues arise? Is there any of that? Because and eventually somebody is not going to work out like it's just going to get to that point.

I mentioned at the top some do's and don'ts to keep in mind through this process.

Let's talk a little bit about that.

For the safety directors out there looking at a potential staffing partner, what are some things they should keep in mind?

Yeah, and of course, I mean, there's more than just one, but I'll start with probably the biggest one.

And I think it's not taking the time or only taking the time to to interview the company and kind of take their words at face value and not interview their processes.

So you could see a lot of marketing content.

Um, you know, Hey, we've got 10,000 resumes, rapid deployment, all these other kind of buzzwords and catchphrases.

And don't get me wrong.

We use those too.

And all those things are true.

Um, But a safety director who's evaluating somebody they actually want to partner with, they need to be looking a little deeper, kind of look under the hood.

What do your interviews look like? What types of questions are you asking? How do you evaluate your candidates? Do you evaluate their soft skills? How they communicate? What kind of leadership qualities do they have? How do you evaluate their technical knowledge? And based on my scope of work, how do you match? you know, the technical skills to what I'm actually going to have on my job site.

So how do you match those up? You know, secondly, you'll remember what kind of when you're doing an interview, you know, the interviewee is also kind of interviewing the interviewer in a way.

And a lot of times that's based on the questions that the interviewer asks.

So I'd say same thing, flip it on its head.

Evaluate a safety staffing company based on the information they seek from you.

So don't look for, like, if they're just saying, you know, how many people and when do you need them? This is very surface level.

And kind of signals that the company might just be a seat filler.

And we'll kind of get into that in a little bit too.

But you want somebody who's asking deeper questions.

What's your specific scope of work? What's your estimated manpower? What top three hazard areas do you foresee over the course of your project? What's the project management team look like on site? What's the support that this safety professional is going to have? Is there a lead on site? Is there a regional safety professional they can reach out to for support and assistance? And so really, two projects side by side can look the same on paper, but getting a deeper understanding of your specific needs and site is really going to lead to better outcomes.

And so So that's a big one.

And then number three, I think not providing enough support to the safety professional once they're on site.

And so there are a lot of companies that they just kind of put somebody out there.

You know, do they help when issues arise? Is there any of that? Because and eventually somebody is not going to work out like it's just going to get to that point.