As an employer, you’re responsible for everyone who works on your site and that includes contractors as well as direct employees.
From a legal aspect, you have to ensure they work safely and do no harm to themselves or anyone else while from a business perspective you need to know they’re competent to do the job for which they’re employed.
For these reasons and more, it’s important that a full and comprehensive induction is carried out for every contractor before they’re allowed to start work. This induction will cover aspects that apply to the company generally but may also deal with site-specific or task-specific topics.
A site induction has several purposes and involves different tasks:
All details of the induction must be recorded, including acknowledgements from contractors that they have received the appropriate information. You must also record the relevant dates so that required updates can be organised if legislation or requirements change.
Site inductions have traditionally taken the form of room-based, face-to-face sessions.
However, online inductions offer many benefits that include:
Site induction is essential to reduce security and safety risks and to ensure the competence and compliance of all contractors as well as employees. Online induction is even better, however, because it produces all the benefits of traditional methods plus additional ones that include a speedier, more reliable and effective process.