In many cases, the OHS laws impose requirements on employers without specifying exactly what they must do to comply. To assist employers, government agencies responsible for enforcing the OHS laws will often issue guidelines that spell out the steps employers must take to fulfill their safety duties. But the government isn’t the only source of guidance on safety compliance out there. Many industry safety organizations publish similar guides focused on the OHS requirements most critical for their particular industries. But these guidelines can be useful to employers outside of the industry, too. Enform, a safety association for the oil and gas industry, recently released guidelines designed to enhance supervisor competency as well as a contractor management system guideline. The guidelines are written for safety coordinators and individuals with employer’s responsibility for site management and/or leadership or who supervise site management personnel. Here’s an overview of these guidelines.

SUPERVISOR GUIDELINES

The Supervisor Competency Guideline is designed to help companies ensure that their supervisors perform at the highest level of competency. It spells out a process for assessing a supervisor’s performance of his OHS duties that’s based on the principle that there are six elements of competent supervision: 1) leadership; 2) communication; 3) planning; 4) performance; 5) measurement; and 6) improvement. The process, which is intended to not only assess supervisors’ current competency but also help them continually improve their performance, has six steps:

1. Screening candidates for supervisory positions;
2. Evaluating candidates after screening;
3. Providing an orientation for new supervisors;
4. Letting them start supervising;
5. Initially evaluating them; and
6. Conducting ongoing evaluations with an expectation that they’ll continually improve their performance. 

The guide also provides tools to help companies assess their supervisors and develop a supervisor assessment program, such as a scorecard for evaluating supervisors, sample assessment questions and a supervisor attributes assessment outline.

CONTRACTOR GUIDELINES

The Contractor Management Systems Guideline provides a framework for companies to assess their legal responsibilities for contractors based on the law in their jurisdiction and a template for them to use to develop a system to manage the risks associated with hiring contractors. It identifies six key steps for the successful hiring and management of contractors:

1. Defining the scope of work;
2. Establishing contractor expectations;
3. Conducting contractor pre-qualification and selection;
4. Choosing and developing the appropriate agreement;
5. Managing the contractor; and
6. Keeping records and exercising due diligence.

The guideline spells out what companies should do in each of these steps in detail. It also includes tools companies can use in developing their own contractor management systems, such as a contractor management policy, contractor safety evaluation checklist and safe work agreement.

ANALYSIS

As the supervisor guideline notes, “supervisor competency is good business.” Supervisors are in many ways the company’s point men for safety compliance and due diligence because they’re out in the workplace and in a position to identify hazards, ensure workers follow safety rules, etc. So any tool that can help you ensure that the company’s supervisors are competent is worth a look.

In addition, managing contractors is one of the biggest challenges safety coordinators face. The guideline notes that “inefficient, incomplete or inconsistent contactor management practices greatly increase the risk of costly delays, incidents and hazards to health, safety, equipment and the environment. At worst they can lead to serious injury or fatality and an irrevocably damaged corporate reputation.” The guideline will help companies reduce these risks by implementing a process to hire the right contractor to do the job with the right equipment and the right plan in place to ensure safe, efficient work practices. (In future issues of the Insider, we’ll discuss each of these guidelines in more detail and tell you how you can use them to improve your company’s safety performance.)