recruiting

Safety Staff are Essential | A COVID-19 Update

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essential safety staff

As the medical community and civic leaders urge only essential personnel to work, you should ask, who are essential employees? 

Safety professionals are high on the list.

Industrial companies and their suppliers are essential businesses and have remained in operation since the outbreak of the Coronavirus.  Due to the stay-at-home order issued by the Governor, most currently scheduled turnarounds have been pushed out to later this year. The disruption of the Coronavirus has brought new and unexpected needs to the businesses we serve.  Being up for the challenge, ResponsAble has been a source of essential staffing for our clients:

It’s important that we keep our distance from people, but not from safety.  An unintended, costly violation can make the current challenging situation worse, threaten the safety of your workers, and negatively affect the reputation that you’ve worked so hard to build. Here are three ways ResponsAble helps you hire qualified, capable staff: 

  1. We’re a part of your industry so we understand the regulations that you’re responsible for maintaining.
  2. We handle all the details (hiring, training, payroll, support and liability) so you can stay busy ramping up for your next project. 
  3. On-demand safety staff. We know you need experienced safety professionals (and backups) that are just a call away when you need a position filled.

We take safety seriously.

Over the past several weeks, we have worked to meet the needs of a changing safety climate and needs. Here are some positions we’ve seen an increased need to recruit and supply:

essential safety staff

Health Screening Personnel

We’ve gained experience in supplying Health Screening Personnel over the past month, and now have the capability to supply Health Screening Technicians to your job sites.  Here’s how this position can help:

The Health Screening Technician may be responsible for assisting the Client with policies and procedures that promote a safe and healthy working environment.  May be capable of performing assignments of limited scope and complexity following the direction of an assigned Client supervisor. Health Screening Technicians can promote safety and health by performing temperature screening for personnel, completing CDC questionnaires based on CDC guidelines, and directing personnel for any advanced medical attention.  Health Screening Techs are also knowledgeable of CDC guidelines for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and other applicable standards.

Industrial Laborers

We also have a database of Industrial Laborers available for your specific projects.  Industrial Laborers help prepare and maintain a site by cleaning, loading, unloading, and transferring of materials to where they may be needed on a work site. These workers have a valid Basic Orientation Plus and TWIC. Each laborer is screened to ensure a strong work ethic, strong mind and strong body.

essential safety staff

Permanent Positions

ResponsAble can source Direct Hire and Temp-To-Hire employees for our clients.

With our Direct Hire service, ResponsAble Safety Staffing agrees to recruitment services, through the provision of resumes for candidate evaluation, in support of our Client’s stated intent to locate, identify and potentially hire candidates as full-time employees. Contact us for more information, including pricing.

Our ResponsAble Temp-To-Hire services include contract employees whom are assigned to a ResponsAble Client with the negotiated intention of “temp-to-hire”. The temporary employee must work for a Client as a Contract Employee from ResponsAble Safety Staffing for a total of amount of consecutive verified hours before becoming eligible for hire by Client.  It is at our Client’s discretion to determine if and/or when they may choose to convert the Contract Employee once eligible for conversion. It is also at the Contract Employee’s discretion to negotiate the terms of their offer for hire by Client and acceptance or refusal of hire offer by Client.  Contact us for more information, including pricing.

We specialize in all the work and details that you don’t have time for when you need additional safety staff. Give us a call today for a free needs assessment to find solutions for safety measures such as health screenings of your workers before entering a jobsite, or simply recruiting qualified safety personnel. Let us know how we can help at (225) 753-1909 or John@rasafetystaffing.com.

Recruiting Tips To Build Your Best Team

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Helping companies with staffing needs is our business and we know the challenges of recruiting talent in today’s labor market.  Our clients have found significant value in staying focused on their core business by outsourcing much of the recruiting burden to us.

But for those who want to tackle recruiting internally, this post shares some basic tips for critical recruiting fundamentals that will help you build your best team.

1. Have an Effective Job Posting

Everybody has a job posting as you can’t really post a job without one; but, you need a good job posting.  What makes a good job post?

  • An appealing post will describe some positive attributes of the employer
  • A job post should be clear and concise about the description of the job role
  • A good post will sound appealing to the target candidate pool
  • The job post should provide enough detail to clarify required candidate qualifications

2. Advertise Your Job Post to Reach Your Target Audience

Armed with effective job posting copy, you are ready to promote or advertise your job.  There are a few things to consider when promoting your job posts.

  • Target the right audience and best platform to advertise your job. Different job boards appeal to different candidates so you need to put your jobs on the most appropriate board or combination for the target audience.
  • Consider the “key words” for search engine optimization, SEO, in the title of your job post. Using effective key words will put your post higher in search results which affects how many people see your job.
  • Sponsor or promote your post where available to maintain a page one to page two position in search results. Different recruiting sites have differing costs for sponsoring job posts so the optimum dollar amount will vary by recruiting site and the competing or similar jobs on each site.

3. Phone Screen Selected Candidates

A prepared phone interview to screen candidates selected from your applicant pool is an important step in the recruiting process.  The phone screen assures the candidate matches their resume and can communicate the same.  A thirty minute conversation by phone saves time by avoiding wasted time in bad interviews.

  • The phone screen should include the required candidate qualifications.
  • Review both parties’ expectations of the job to minimize risk of obvious deal breakers from turning up in a face to face interview.
  • Get a broad feel for salary expectations from the candidate

4. The Face-to-Face Interview

Be prepared for the face to face interview.  There are several parts to the face to face interview that we focus upon.

  • Use a written interview guide to ensure you cover all the key points to support a robust interview.
  • Have more than one employer representative participate in the interview process if practical. It’s good to have more than one perspective for the best results.
  • The first and most basic element is confirming the person matches the resume or application. Some people look great on paper but struggle to tell you the same story in person.
  • Include a few behavioral questions along the line of work problems they have solved, communicating in difficult situations examples, obstacles they have overcome, etc.
  • Character and integrity; arguably the most important traits after basic competency for building a good team. Pay careful attention to character, integrity and reliability indicators throughout the interview.  Ask a few charged questions about doing the right thing even when it costs you personally or how they respond to authority for example.
  • Be open and honest about challenges of job or work environment. In over 20 years of management, I’ve never seen a job that was not challenging in multiple ways.
  • Ask the candidate to score their interest level for you at the close of the interview. I am very weary of a candidate who can not sincerely tell me they are interested and want the job.
  • Lastly, score the candidate privately immediately after the interview. A simple 1 – 10 score with 10 being a perfect candidate and 1 being “really bad fit.”  We are naturally biased toward the most recent interviews so it’s important to score the candidates at the time we meet them.

5. Take the Hiring Process Seriously

This may sound obvious and it should, but I see business peers short cut a robust hiring process with regularity.

  • Don’t hire a friend or relative because you know them. Interview a friend or relative because you know them every time and encourage them to perform well through the interview process. Hiring a friend is easy while firing them for poor performance is painful for the business, the employee and the friendship.
  • The hiring process is part of the public relations and branding of your business. Be professional and represent your business as professional to the industry you serve.  It’s a small world.

Following a consistent and effective recruiting process for your business is fundamental to strong performance.  It’s good for the business and good for the employees.  Invest the time to make sure recruiting is done well or find someone to help you.  The strength of your team depends on it.

Tips to Effectively Manage Employee Turnover

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employee turnover

Keeping Costs Low and Morale Up During Employee Turnover

Employee turnover can be a difficult problem for industrial companies. Turnover presents many challenges: ensuring new employees have adequate training, maintaining safety and procedural standards in the workplace, preventing slowdown and inefficiency on the line, preventing increased costs to the company, and maintaining morale among remaining employees whose workload might fluctuate with the added responsibility of keeping up with demand and instructing new co-workers. This article will offer some tips and insights into how you can avoid or minimize many of these problems, which would otherwise be detrimental to your company’s growth.

 

1. Create an Encouraging Environment for New Employees

One of the most important things that a workplace can do to improve productivity is to maintain high employee morale. This goes for seasoned workers as well as new hires. Even an experienced employee who is new to your company will perform far more effectively in an environment where they feel they have room to ask questions, get help, voice concerns, and build confidence in their role. In addition to this, make sure your new employees are familiar with the policies and procedures of your company, from safety protocols to where they should submit their time sheets at the end of a pay period.

 

2. Listen to the Concerns of Remaining Employees

It’s vital to keep morale high during times of intense employee turnover. Remaining employees might wonder what their workload may look like or how floor efficiency could be impacted. It is important to clearly communicate your expectations to your employees. However, it is just as important to hear their concerns and work with them to find solutions. Giving your employees a voice during periods of change enables them to feel heard and keeps workforce morale from dipping, which is key for any company trying to avoid a serious drop in efficiency. If remaining workers feel respected, this can help prevent exacerbating turnover as well as encourage employees to come to you for help solving problems in the future.

 

3. Connect New Employees and Experienced Employees

New employees will work and learn much more effectively if they’re able to shadow experienced employees, ask them questions, and come to them for insight. This also will help experienced employees feel as if they’re a part of the growth of the company and are involved in improving the effectiveness of the workplace. It can also help reduce training costs and improve the learning curve for those new to the job, increasing profitability in the long run.

 

4. Make Sure There Are Enough New Workers

As soon as possible, ensure that your company is making enough new hires to pick up slack in production and relieve the workload of remaining employees. Inevitably, the more strain added to a workforce, the less efficiently it will operate. Therefore, this is a problem you will want to solve as soon as you are able; current employees will want to see that their hard work will be relieved. From the standpoint of productivity, workers who are stretched too thin will struggle with morale and efficiency, so making sure this issue is addressed as quickly as possible is important.

 

5. Manage Costs Without Slowing Down

Companies often shudder at the thought of employee turnover, with good reason: The associated costs can balloon up to twice the salary of a retained worker. However, there are various other ways these costs can be reduced. One of the most effective is to entrust hiring to an outside company that specializes in matching qualified employees with positions like the ones you need filled. While upfront costs might seem to make this a more expensive option, in reality, the money you will save by receiving qualified replacements quickly will be far more than the fees associated with a hiring service. These services help you replace employees quickly, allowing you to save money that would have been lost during the long period of inadequate staff, slowed productivity, and training.

There will inevitably be challenges with employee turnover, but with the proper resources and methods, you can minimize the difficulties your company will encounter in the process.

Turnaround Safety Staffing Solutions

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turnaround staffing

When we were first getting started we were offering other safety consulting services along with our turnaround and safety staffing. Over and over again I would get a call from a project manager asking to help with staffing safety positions.

The Challenges of Turnaround Staffing

Their issues were normal, everyday project management stuff:

  • They had to develop the full schedule for all of the work that needed to happen in a short turnaround time.
  • They needed to make sure the budget was solidified and that they were on track.
  • They needed to coordinate and solidify equipment needs and contractor schedules.
  • And, they had to hurry up and find 10-20 confined space professionals and some temporary laborers to help out.

The problem with finding safety people, or even laborers, for a short-term turnaround is that they can’t start recruiting too early because they may not be available once the job comes up.

But, when waiting until the last minute, it collides with everything else they needed to do and there was always the fear that they wouldn’t find enough people.

When we could jump in and take care of the safety staffing piece, it was a relief to them. An added benefit that they didn’t have to put all of these temporary positions on their payroll for only a few weeks; that also saved time.

I saw this as such a benefit that we ended up changing our entire business model over to just safety staffing. We have learned a lot over the years too.

If you are a contractor or industrial plant and need short-term temporary safety staffing or laborers, here are several benefits you may want to consider in determining if you want to hire them directly or use a staffing company.

Benefits for Using an Outside Safety Staffing Company for Your Turnaround

By using an outside safety staffing company:

  1. They have a large database of already interviewed and selected candidates that they can pull from to fill your current needs.
  2. Their database of employees will more likely include any site specific credentials, training, or certification your site requires.
  3. They can fill your needs quickly.
  4. They handle the payroll administration.
  5. They carry the payroll for 30 days.
  6. They provide the workman’s compensation insurance for these employees.
  7. They handle any and all communication regarding logistics, hiring and termination.
  8. If someone isn’t working out, they will communicate for you, and also replace the position so you do not have an unfilled hole in your team.
  9. You can have piece of mind that the safety staffing will be filled so that you can focus on all of the other pieces of the project that need to be managed.

The Economic Decision of Using a Staffing Company

In talking to these project managers, they felt pressured to hire everyone themselves because they thought it was cheaper. But, if you really look at the details, in most cases it isn’t:

  • You would have to run the employment ads
  • You have to staff the job fairs
  • You have to interview more people because you don’t have a database to pull from
  • You have to pay for the short-term administrative costs of adding all of the people as employees
  • You have to pay for the workman’s comp
  • And if they don’t work out, you have to replace them…if you can for that short of a time frame

And there is opportunity cost for your internal teams time taken away from the other activities that you need to be doing to get ready for the turnaround.

Staffing companies are running an ad and building a database of candidates. It is much more cost efficient for them.

ResponsAble Safety Staffing

Once we changed our focus to full-time safety staffing, we were able to really be a resource and a help to our clients. We have been in the safety industry for a long-time. Most of the companies that are staffing safety positions are also trying to provide equipment, consulting, training and other safety services.

We wanted to be different.

We felt that if we tried to provide such a wide range of safety services, we would be in the same boat as the project managers before a turnaround. We would be scrambling try to pull everything together for our customers.

Instead, we wanted to focus fully on the staffing service. By doing this, we feel uniquely qualified to provide you with the most qualified candidates that much what you need for your job.

Why? Because it is all we do.

To improve your staffing experience, give us a call to talk about how we can provide the staff you need for your business. For more information about safety staffing, give us a call at 225-753-1909.

Outsource Safety Staffing and Watch Your Business Grow

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outsource safety staffing

We know that the administrative load of HR duties can be overwhelming. All of the details of managing employees, payroll, safety and compliance can weigh heavy on your mind. More than likely you ALWAYS feel like you have too much to do. There are only so many hours in a day.

Time is your greatest resource- shouldn’t you be using it to focus on growth strategies? When you outsource safety staffing, it allows you to create some margin, to find time you otherwise wouldn’t have in your schedule to focus on what’s next. Partnering with ResponsAble frees you up to grow and we want to help you streamline your processes in order to boost your bottom line. One of our goals is to alleviate the admin “busy work” burden from you so that you can get back to doing what you do best.

Get back to business.

We offer our clients the convenience of handing off all of the paperwork and administrative work involved with hiring, paying, and managing people to us when you outsource your safety staffing. Our services will significantly reduce the time you spend on paper processes, giving you much more of a competitive advantage to focus on doing what only you can do. Give your HR functions to us so that you can get back to business. And as you grow, we’ll grow with you.

Here’s three reasons why it makes good business sense to outsource your safety staffing:

1. Save time and money: We onboard new employees saving you administration and processing.

2. Focus on strategy: Spend more time getting new business and looking for growth opportunities.

3. Increase compliance: When you hire us, the safety staffing experts, compliance is no longer a concern. We guarantee that you will meet all compliance standards with our staff and employees.

We are your ally.

We want to become an extension of your business and an ally that helps go grow to where you want to go. When you outsource safety staffing to us, we take on the HR functions of employee assistance, temporary staffing, background checks, training and development, payroll and more. To speak to us more about outsourcing, give us a call at 225-753-1909.

Quality Safety Personnel: Get Access to Our Continuously Growing Database

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Continuously Growing Database

Just last week I got a call from a client in Ohio that needed safety personnel for job at a refinery to start immediately, just as soon as we could work out the logistics.

Most of the calls that we get from clients are safety managers that need people on the site within days (more like yesterday). Not only do they need someone to fill the role quickly, but they need a high quality safety professional- someone who has been trained, meets set expectations, is certified, qualified, has passed drug tests and background checks, and can start immediately.

Luckily, we have enough people in our database that we can meet this need quickly and match high quality safety professionals to clients that really needed them yesterday.

Set a Higher Standard for Your Hiring Processes

When you’re pressed for time and you need to fill positions quickly to ramp up for a job, don’t hire just anyone; it’s not worth the risk. As tempting as it may be to make the fast and easy hires, it’s better for you to be picky in the selection of your safety professionals.

When you make desperate hires (untrained, unexperienced people) in a time crunch, you send a negative message to your employer that can be damaging to your reputation. You do not want to put untrained, unexperienced safety professionals on a worksite, as it will inevitably create worksite issues and an unsafe environment.

Get Access to Our Stream of Qualified Safety Personnel

When you hire ResponsAble to take over your safety hiring process, you get access to a continually growing pool of highly qualified safety professionals. Our safety professionals stay consistently employed so they stay sharp in their training and skill level. We don’t supply you with just warm bodies; we have a ready pool of trained and reliable safety personnel that have years of experience.

Our hiring process includes:

  • Full background checks & drug testing
  • Ranking to check skill levels and specialties.
  • Ongoing training, certification and development to improve each individual’s fit with more positions and companies.

Hire a Safety Staffing Specialist that Recruits & Trains Around the Clock

ResponsAble Safety Staffing works around the clock, continuously recruiting, training, and adding highly qualified safety personnel to our team. We do this year round to acquire a pool of qualified safety personnel to match them to employers. We never stop searching for the best of the best to send to our clients.

This continuously growing database of talent is an ongoing stream for companies like yours that need safety staff to ramp up new jobs quickly:

  • Temporary ramp up for quick turnarounds
  • Expansion Projects
  • Interim Positions

We are the Safety Staffing Specialists

Our safety personnel are better screened, trained, and more experienced because we are 100% focused on safety staffing. This benefits you in upholding a professional image and reputation, fewer hassles, and a safer job site. We can give you all this on demand, from an ever-growing database of quality safety professionals.

You may not have time to seek out highly qualified safety professionals in a time crunch, but we do. In fact, we don’t have to find them. We already have them, and they’re ready to go. Contact us today to learn how to outsource your safety staffing with us, the safety staffing experts. Give us a call at 225-753-1909!