Third-party contractor management boosts safety climate, NSC study shows

Suppliers, contractors and vendors who use third-party contractor management programs have better average Total Recordable Rates; Days Away, Restricted or Transferred Rates; and Lost Workday Rates than counterparts who do not use these services, according to a new report from the National Safety Council.

For the report, NSC used data provided by contractor management firm BROWZ LLC. Researchers analyzed 17,460 companies that joined the BROWZ network between 2007 and 2015. The data was used to test five hypotheses. The researchers found that:

• BROWZ contractors in any two-digit industry code will have a better average TRR, DART and LWR than the industry as a whole.
• BROWZ contractors will have better average TRR, DART rates and LWR than cross-industry averages.

“Contract workers are a vulnerable population – often performing higher-risk jobs in worksites with little to no management supervision,” Amy Harper, director of workplace strategy and the Journey to Safety Excellence initiative at NSC, said in a Sept. 13 press release. “A best practice for employers is to have a formal contractor management program that helps ‘qualify’ contractors to meet standards set by the hiring organization. It is encouraging to see this report confirm that these types of programs appear to help protect the contractors in our nation’s workforce.”