Impacts of Temporary & Contract Workers on Your Safety Program

Legal Implications, Liability and Responsibilities

Employers can enjoy many benefits from hiring temporary workers, contractors and on-call workers — a group that is collectively known as “non-permanent” workers. The flexibility that allows them to quickly respond to changing workloads is a key driver, as is the ability to bring in specialized help and expertise on an as-needed basis for tasks such as confined-space work.

The arrangement offers benefits for workers, too; many who work on a contract or contingent basis have chosen to do so and prefer to work this way.

Hiring non-permanent workers, however, creates unique challenges for health and safety departments and the programs they oversee. A new Insight Report from Intelex and BLR takes an in-depth look at this form of labor and its effects on employers’ H&S programs. It looks at such aspects as:

• Who’s Doing What – A look at what constitutes non-permanent work and the differences between its various forms.
• Temporary Workers, Responsibility, and Liability — examining the legal obligations of employers who bring in temporary and contract labor and the key expectations of regulatory bodies like OSHA.
• The impact of temporary and contract workers on safety programs.