Tackling the biggest challenges facing hiring companies and contractors

Shane Mercer  00:00:02 
Hello and Welcome to another episode of COS TV. I'm Shane Mercer, Senior Editor of Canadian Occupational Safety on today's show, we're speaking with Henriette Bichai, President of Safe Contractor Canada. 

Henriette Bichai  00:00:15 
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Very excited to be here. 

Shane Mercer  00:00:18 
Henriette, when you speak with hiring companies and contractors, what are the biggest challenges you hear about when it comes to contractor compliance? 

Henriette Bichai  00:00:29 
Let me tell you when I speak with hiring clients and when we do our quarterly business reviews or our h1 reviews with all of our clients, the things we hear most are quite interesting, because, yes, safety is so important to our hiring clients, but it seems like within the safety teams, we have limited resources, so navigating these complex regulations, collecting this documentation, becomes very complex, very cumbersome. They're under resourced, and they're worried. Are they missing something? Is somebody coming on site? Have they vetted them correctly? And then at the same time, we think about, well, I have labor shortage. I need these guys on My Sites. Do I sacrifice speed to execution for safety? So the consistency across all of the contractors is difficult to manage, from small contractor to large contract, perhaps a large contractor has all of the documentation ready and on hand and somebody to send it, whereas the smaller contractors slightly more complex. So that sort of lack of consistency across all of the contractor management chain becomes difficult and complex and cumbersome to manage and speed to execution as well. So you know the worries about compromising safety is definitely something that's top of mind and something that we hear a lot, and then performance, performance and compliance status. So when you think about, okay, so somebody's come on my site, I managed to vet them as best I think I can. I don't do a follow up. I don't have the manpower to go on sites. I don't know what's happening. Are they then executing correctly, so all the way down to the worker. So maybe I can manage the compliance of the actual contractor company. But when it comes to the employees on site, I don't know if they have the required training to be on site. So that's something that we hear often when we speak to our hiring clients. 

Shane Mercer  00:02:20 
How does Safe Contractor help businesses tackle these challenges and make compliance easier to manage?  

Henriette Bichai  00:02:26 
Yeah, I think Safe Contractor and solutions that we oversee and manage were built in tandem, in collaboration, co created with our hiring clients. So that's why, really, the truth is what we do and what we can do to help is just offload onto us this type of vetting. So think about how we can provide simplicity. We can then take it and speak to execution. So we have the manpower, and we have the expertise to take your contractors through this process, small to large. We have the ability as well to take the smaller contractors hold their hands, human approach to complete the health and safety questionnaire, and we have the ability as well to monitor a continuous improvement. We have a dedicated health and safety team that then sort of signs off on the compliance and that becomes very important, because that sort of human relationship between a contractor and health and safety expert exists, and it is in relation to our hiring clients. So we do vet our contractors ourselves, and then we make that available in terms of data visibility to our hiring clients. Our network has become quite significant throughout Canada. So we are the largest player in Canada, with over 40,000 contractors who are going through that process of being vetted, verified and certified as being safe, particular to their trade or as well into their province or jurisdiction. So what we then do is make it visible to our hiring clients from a data perspective, and then we're able to customize that visibility so that our teams that are hiring clients and our partners are able to make these decisions and allow these people on site to do good work that is necessary as quick as possible. So we combine the digital platform with the certified human insight to give the most accurate accreditation for health and safety, and not just simple algorithms or predictions, which is really important to keep people safe. So our core value is the same as our hiring clients, which is, we want people to come home safe. And of course, that then becomes slightly bigger. At our hiring clients, they start to ask us, like future questions, which will I'm happy to address later. But when we talk about every other department is also interested in that insight, we'd never lose our core value, which is health and safety. And so we're able to give that in terms of financial, operational and legal insight to allow for execution of the hiring clients. 

Shane Mercer  00:04:54 
What regulatory changes do you see on the horizon that businesses should start preparing for now? 

Henriette Bichai  00:05:01 
Yeah, great question, and thank you for asking that, because that means that the audience and the people trust us to be the experts when it comes to safety. So where I want them to see us and where I want them to see us as partners is exactly there we want to be seen as a risk partner. Of course, health and safety is our core value, and we will never sacrifice that. But there are other risks that are coming to play, and something that we should all be mindful for. So with our experience, as we visit a number of you, and as we have relationship with regulatory bodies, we're starting to see things like climate regulation. So when you think about carbon neutral, not just being carbon neutral, that's something that's coming or carbon zero that people are talking about, it's coming to the forefront, but think about really climate regulations as a whole. So I think as an industry, we need to start coming together and having workshops and discussing what things like climate regulations are coming to be other things, and particularly more so in provinces, some provinces, more than other, are already entering into specific legislations and regulations and some proposals in terms of bills around psychological safety. So when you think about as well, we've just come off an epic pandemic, history has been written for us, and we think about how has that transformed us when we think about people re entering the workforce. What has gone on in the years that they've been at home industries like oil and gas in terms of harassment, violence prevention, and I'm not targeting them, but even in our mining industries, they've come up with new regulations, new policies internally, handling explosives, gas as well safety. What does that do in terms of our psychological impact? Is definitely a growing concern, and something that we need to continue to address. There is a return to work legislation as well that is coming to light in BC, Bill 190 in Ontario, which is the worker working for workers Act, which is also something we need to look out for. And then there are other emerging policies and bills that are coming to work that we like to come together with our clients and do these specific workshops to support in the future. One big one that I'd like to also bring to light is lots of conversations around AI are taking place. Everybody wants to do more with less, which is normal. And when we talk about operational efficiencies, when we talk about ROIs in terms of an organization, that is definitely a concern. And how are we going to bring AI to enable us? Well, with the introduction of AI comes AI risk. So what does it mean in terms of assessing risk when you bring AI into the workforce, whether it is to help us manage equipment, whether it is to help us manage systems, how does that impact safety in our workforce? So definitely another one to look out for. 

Shane Mercer  00:07:54 
Are there any trends you think businesses can get ahead of, and what steps can they take to be ready for them?  

Henriette Bichai  00:07:57 
What we definitely need to think about is a growing demand for sustainability and social responsibility. It isn't just a buzzword, and that's something that we're doing very actively. Here. We have a dedicated sustainability and social responsibility committee and team who also helps our contractors and hiring clients on that journey. So we're not just scoring them. What we are looking to do is evaluate a progress, and I think that's definitely something we need to do, and we need to collaborate. One of the things definitely a trend that I'm seeing, and we are heavily invested in, is a relationship between hiring clients and contractors. They shouldn't be seen as two dispersed networks, and we are the middleman, if you will. So we are actively connecting those two networks so that they can hear from each other. It is a collaboration between the two. We need each other, and so the insights that we collect from our contractors who are doing and executing and the hiring clients who are using that information to make decisions is definitely something that is going to help us advance. So that connection, that human connection, the relationship and the collaboration, is definitely 

Shane Mercer  00:09:06 
Finally, what advice would you give to hiring companies just starting out on the journey of formalizing their contractor compliance processes? 

Henriette Bichai  00:09:15 
So I would tell them, you know, it is a crawl, walk, run. I think when you look at it, it is quite overwhelming, and because there's a lot to do. And once you have that data visibility, which is like if you blue sky, and you said, I want to have access to everyone and know exactly how they're compliant, you'll start to feel like many departments want to be involved. You have procurement who wants to know about it so that they can issue invoices correctly time the Enter side at this time and exit at this time. You have tech it who, like we talked about safety. How does that enter into our data architecture? Well, I think if you if, if I had one piece of advice of people starting off in this journey is, start small, assign someone who is responsible and often. I go to hiring clients, and we have these conversations be like, we're not really sure who's in charge of this project. Well, at the very base of it, if someone is injured on your site, who is the accountable and who is the responsible, that person is the one in charge. So let's start there. Let's start small. For your contractors. Let us vet them for you, and once we have them as members into our platform, they become visible to you. We do end to end solution so we can go from the hiring clients to the contractors company all the way to the employee that is on your site. We can make sure that that person is the right person, and it has all the accreditation and training required to execute on the task required on site, and we have the ability to do that all the way to the gate system. You don't have to do all of that on day one, and you may not need to do that for now, not this year, not next year. That's part of our team's responsibilities, to sit with you and create these strategic plans, health and safety plan for year one, health and safety plan for year two. So that's the advice that I would give to say, start small. It doesn't need to be an overly cumbersome process, something that we can build on. And most solid houses are building solid foundations. So begin small, solid foundations, and then we'll have a steady house that can sustain any of the winds that and the storms that make up.  

Shane Mercer  00:11:28 
Thanks, Henriette.  

Henriette Bichai  00:11:29 
Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

Shane Mercer  00:11:31 
And thank you for tuning in to COS TV. Stay up to date on the latest news and trends in safety by regularly visiting the safety mag.com I'm Shane Mercer till next time, stay safe.