Compliance gaps and slow AI adoption are leaving frontline workers exposed to growing supply chain risk, new research finds
Supply chain risk is growing faster than most organizations can keep up with, according to new research from Avetta, and the gap is showing up directly at the job site gate. The study, fielded by Censuswide in June 2026, surveyed 500 U.S.-based senior leaders in procurement, supply chain, operations and environmental health and safety, a finding relevant to Canadian employers managing cross-border supply chains as well. It found 77 per cent report increasing supply chain and workforce risk over the past 12 months, while only 44 per cent have real-time visibility into third-party workforce and safety risk. Sixty-eight per cent had already experienced operational delays or shutdowns tied to that risk.
For Abid Yousuf, Chief Customer Officer at Avetta, the numbers reflect what he hears directly from hiring clients and suppliers. "Supply chain risk continues to increase faster than most organizations have planned for," Yousuf said. "Companies are working hard and fast to account for the risk inherent in the supply chain, but with changing geopolitical conditions and the changing economic situation around us, the risks are increasing at a faster rate than companies can actually keep up with."
Workers caught between compliance and the clock
Yousuf said the survey's most direct impact on health and safety leaders managing contractor compliance shows up when a worker arrives on site. "These workers have to go through a fairly rigorous compliance process," he said. "They show up at the gate, and the security person reviews that data and realizes there is information missing from their profile. It could be because the data submitted is still under process, or because a recent incident got flagged and prevents that worker from coming on site. Meanwhile, the operations team on the hiring client side is waiting for that work to commence. The worker being stuck between the compliance process and the client's needs can create a very frustrating experience."
That friction compounds when workers move between employers, Yousuf said, since compliance and incident records rarely follow them. "If there was an incident with this worker at company A, when they shift to company B, are they taking those metrics with them? Are they carrying the compliance records with them? That's what a lot of respondents are looking for: continuity across companies, continuity across workers, across sites."
The cost of over-engineered compliance
The survey found 53 per cent of respondents say compliance demands are pulling time and resources away from frontline safety work, a tension Yousuf said Avetta hears about often from suppliers navigating overlapping certification requirements. "We want to meet the highest level of safety standards, for good reason," he said. "But we've also learned you can over-engineer that part. You can inundate a worker with a litany of requirements and certifications, which overwhelms a lot of suppliers, especially smaller ones going on site to perform a very specific task. The requirements are so broad that they slow suppliers down from actually doing the job. It's that old saying: don't paint with broad brushstrokes. That's what causes the burden on the supplier."
Why predictive AI in safety is lagging
Nearly every organization surveyed, 97.2 per cent, is using AI somewhere in its supply chain risk lifecycle, but predictive safety monitoring ranked third among current use cases at 46 per cent, behind supplier analysis and regulatory tracking. Yousuf attributed the gap to data, not technology. "To have good predictive models for safety and compliance requires good safety data, good performance data," he said. "Avetta has been delivering these services for over 20 years, and the data we've compiled through supplier audits and safety performance management is what feeds our AI models. It's not the type of large language model or AI model that's built. It's the data that feeds it which makes the difference."
Moving beyond a qualified or not-qualified label
Asked about the biggest blind spot safety leaders carry into contractor relationships, Yousuf pointed to how supplier status is typically displayed: a simple red, yellow or green rating. "When a customer sees green, that supplier is qualified to work," he said. "What that doesn't show, at face value, is the supplier's capability for the specific task they're about to perform. There are different shades of green that suppliers qualify for." Avetta is now working to assess supplier safety maturity, he said, including whether workers are trained, whether safety culture is embedded, and how supervisors model safe behaviour, rather than relying on program documentation alone.
Yousuf said the underlying shift is toward proactive readiness over reactive compliance, as faster infrastructure construction raises demand for suppliers who can start work immediately. "The ones that have the qualification, the ones that are compliant, the ones that are ready to go to work are generally the ones that get selected for the job," he said.
