safety staffing

Is Outsourcing the Best Bang for Your Buck? The ROI Of Outsourcing

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ROI Of Outsourcing

We talk a lot about outsourcing your staffing around here. But is outsourcing really the best use of your resources? At first glance, outsourcing services are costly. However, outsourcing is actually used by companies to improve efficiency while REDUCING costs. 

“In a study of 30 firms, outsourcing resulted on average in a 9% reduction in costs and a 15% increase in capacity and quality,” according to Wheelen and Hunger (2010). How do each of these things play out?

Let’s break it down practically.

It’s Monday and you’ve just landed a new contract.

You’ve got 8 staff on-hand that can work on the job, but you need about 15 more trained safety staff before the job starts next week.

On Tuesday you call ResponsAble and tell them the scope of expertise you need for your job.

Next week, your staff show up on time for the job.

That’s it.

When the job is over, the staff that worked on your project return back to ResponsAble and you don’t have to incur the cost or risk of termination or management.

Outsourcing means that you can grow your business and operate successfully without compromising quality or safety.

In this scenario (and many others) outsourcing was valuable to the contractor because he could still bid on that project knowing that he didn’t have the staff on hand to complete the job.

He didn’t have to hire staff pre-emptively prior to landing the job, thus costing him additional months of staff time and liability without a job on the table. He also didn’t have to panic after receiving a job that he didn’t have staff for.

Had this contractor not had access to a staffing company, things would have played out differently.

Upon winning the bid on the contract, he would have to scramble to find staff that were qualified within such a short time period. This would be very time consuming for himself and others on his team. Not to mention potentially impossible to recruit the caliber of employee he was looking for on such short notice. He may have had to take on the risk of hiring staff that don’t have as much experience or training in the type of work required for the job- thus compromising quality, efficiency and safety.

However, with the help of a staffing agency this contractor was able to have peace of mind while growing the success of his company by bidding on bigger and better jobs with confidence.

This contractor also has more time to spend focusing on his business and getting the next job, because he wasn’t spending his time managing his current staff, mitigating risk and focusing attention internally.

By working with a staffing agency a company actually SAVES on hours of time on overhead, liability of ill-equipped staff, risk of low-quality work, and cost of onboarding, training and termination.

Interested in learning more about how outsourcing your staffing could actually reduce cost for your company? Contact us to talk about specific opportunities to increase efficiency and effectiveness on your next job!

Overcoming Safety Challenges in a Turnaround

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safety staffing contractor

If you have planned for a plant shutdown or turnaround, or are currently managing one, then you have encountered the associated risk and safety hazards.  All good employers make safety the top priority while the turnaround will also be evaluated based upon quality, schedule and budget.  

How do you effectively drive high quality work on schedule and within budget without compromising safety?  

Build and maintain a safety culture with accountability.  

There are a lot of moving parts to your turnarounds with multiple contractors and subcontractors.  All these moving parts can threaten the integrity of your safety culture without a solid framework to keep everyone accountable to the safety mission.  

The blocking and tackling required to execute the quality of work, adherence to schedule and budget can begin to push against the zero tolerance nature of effective safety compliance.  While we know recognizing and preventing hazards is key to a safe workplace, as long as humans continue to work, there will be accidents.  Minimizing the risk of incident given that humans are working amongst changing hazards is key.  

How do you minimize the risk of a safety incident on your job?  

  • • Recognize the hazard
  • • Communicate
  • • Act to mitigate the threat 

If you can improve the turnaround team’s performance on these three points, you will minimize the risk of having an accident on your job.  

How do you improve the turnaround team’s performance on these three points?

  • • Assure there are experienced Safety Specialists and Techs working your turnaround
  • • Keep the experienced Safety Specialists and Techs out of the line of production management reporting

By having experienced Safety Specialists, Techs and other safety roles out of the production reporting chain of command, you maximize the total team accountability to the safety culture and zero tolerance mandate.  

Having Experienced Safety Staff means people whose primary role is Safety and who is fully competent in recognizing hazards, communicating effectively and knows how to act to support mitigation of a threatening situation.  

Just as you need your welders to be highly competent specialists who answer to the quality of their welds, so you also need Safety Staff from top to bottom who are highly competent and are not unduly influenced by any competing priorities such as schedule or budget.

It may seem of little consequence to many Turnaround Managers or Planners how the Safety staff is sourced for their project, but the impact of Safety Staff sourcing can be quite significant.  There is wisdom in helping your turnaround employees and contractors succeed by having Safety Staff as a stand alone team; out of the line of production supervision.  Minimize the risk associated with having the “fox watching the hen house.” 

What is a major step forward toward overcoming safety challenges during a turnaround?

Include an experienced Safety Staffing Contractor on your turnaround for all safety related positions where roles are not already filled by the owners’ safety staff.   

We help staff for turnarounds so have to identify these challenges and make it a priority to plan and communicate well so that things go smoothly.

If you are need of temporary labor or safety professionals during a turnaround, give us a call. Even if you have run into an obstacle toward the end of a turnaround, we may be able to provide qualified staff to handle the job. To learn more about the positions we staff and our process, please see here: https://responsablestaffing.com/safety-staffing/

Our Solution to Safety Staffing Shortages

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At ResponsAble, we understand that when hiring new employees, especially for temporary positions, there are several risk factors involved. Common concerns include:

  • Do these employees have experience?
  • Are they certified?
  • How are they prepared for the job?

We believe our knowledge and attention to detail is unmatched when screening Industrial Laborers, Confined Space Attendants, and the rest of our positions.

We have been matching experienced personnel to companies long enough to understand that every company culture, every open position, and every project has unique needs. We are able to truly customize our approach.

Lately, we have processed employees for worksites such as roofing, mine work, plant work, and other various labor-intensive positions. Commonly, we recruit employees for industry-wide jobs such as new construction sites, civil work, and cooling towers.

Our Screening Process: A Unique Approach to Your Business

The screening process begins when a project manager is assigned to your project and works with your team to fulfill the required positions, with the qualifications and experience you need.

Then, the on-boarding process of new candidates begins by ensuring they have the necessary credentials and certifications:

  • Updated Basic Orientation Plus Card
  • Updated TWIC Card
  • Prior Experience in an Industrial or Similar Setting Related to the  Position

These certifications serve as a preview to the applicant’s work ethic and eligibility for safety positions.

Processing and Preparation

After we collect certifications, we interview the applicants using behavioral styled questions. With those questions, we are able to confirm that candidates are experienced and knowledgable about the industry.

We use their answers as a way to understand their ability to handle an emergency situation, their creativity to solving problems, and their overall comfort level in industrial settings.

Along with behavioral questions, we screen the candidates for other qualifying factors: transportation, punctuality, reliability, skills, willingness to travel, etc.

Some of the best advice we can give a potential candidate (prior to an interview) is this:

  • Be punctual to your interview and all future job sites.
  • Dress and look presentable.
  • Research and learn about the petrochemical industry or other fields that interest you.
  • Obtain the proper certification and education.

Growing Database of Employees

If the applicant meets those specifications, they are placed on our payroll system, saving your administration time and cost.

We even cover workman’s compensation and payroll taxes and fulfill our process by handling the logistics of getting the employee to your job site.

We are continuously screening applicants for our main positions: Industrial Laborers, Confined Space Attendants, and Safety Technicians. This ongoing stream of talent allows us to supply experiences employees on demand.

We are not another staffing agency, we are the safety experts. For more information about our services, please give us a call at 225-753-1909.

4 Factors Safety Professionals Apply to International Expansion

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Safety professionals are partners in the company’s corporate leadership so when a company expands beyond their borders, it is these professionals you can trust.

Their expertise and experience are what encourages companies to grow, both locally and internationally. Without safety professionals, the risks of injuries rise, the general productivity of a company decreases, and the diversity in experience and knowledge disappears.

Local, smaller businesses tend strive to employ laborers that are in closer proximity to the business, however when expanding internationally, workers with varying backgrounds in language, culture, and homeland are integrated into the staffing selections. There is value in the advancement that is made with incorporating diversity and in these situations, it is the safety professionals that oversee the development of the employees.

Overall benefit of international expansion:

The opportunity to expand a business drastically increases when companies establish new residences globally. Safety professionals play a significant role in the founding and cultivating of industries both domestic and foreign.

It is a growing trend that companies have operations in several countries, which brings a new collection of challenges. Balancing an atmosphere that is progressive while maintaining a rooted foundation in the companies’ procedures is at the forefront of building a business internationally.

What to expect from the experts:

When establishing new roots in a foreign country, these professionals create a safe, stable environment for a business to grow by leading the decisions about how the business is going to function.

According to Inshpo,  a properly functioning global framework for OHS safety professionals are positioned as:

“Facilitators of a shared understanding of the different roles for the OHS Professional and the OHS Practitioner;

Key advisors, strategist and leader in fully integrating the management of OHS risk into sustainable business practice;

Skilled implementer of OHS activities and an effective OHS supporter and communicator at the site.”

Four factors OHS applies when establishing international production sites:

OHS professional organizations believe in expanding their corporations with educated and ethical standards. Investing time and energy into sites are what safety professionals are experts at, and they use these four factors as an outline on how to properly execute their workforce environment.

Question
Organizations that trust safety professionals to begin a new project know that they will ask the right questions. They are trained to be observant toward their surroundings and ensure a physically safe work environment. As leaders, they make risk evaluations, safety strategy recommendations, and are proactive in preparing the site for production. In an international setting, professionals have keen alertness to the set-up so that the company will reflect the organic structure.

Compare
Contrastingly, safety professionals do not take major risks in organizations that could have the potential to be counterproductive or deadly. They understand the complexity of a productive work environment and know that the best way to create policies and procedures is to model them after what they have learned. They do not put others, themselves, or their company at risk of dangerous physical, ethical, or economic exposure.

Discipline
Safety professionals are team players and they value their role as team captain. These professionals respect authority and do not compromise their decisions based on the relationships to others. In a situation where an employee violates policy, it is the professionals that you can trust to properly discipline the offender.

Educate
Safety professionals curate an atmosphere of safety because they apply their extensive experiences with situational safety and their ongoing education about the topic. You can trust that these professionals will not make irrational decisions but instead investigate the issue and find a well-balanced, effective solution. When placed in an international setting, professionals consider the linguistic and cultural differences. By doing this, the productivity can continue to grow because the site is a dynamic environment for the employees to thrive.

 

The benefits of the roles adopted by safety professionals ensure the quality, accuracy, and overall long-term promotion of safety standards and procedures for the corporation.

If you would like to continue this conversation, we would love to further discuss the different roles that safety professionals play. Our safety professionals are high quality, experienced employees that can add value to your organization. Click here to read more and give us a call at 225-753-1909!

 

A Safety Staffing Solution for Turnarounds

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

The Challenges of Staffing for Turnarounds

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 people 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.