November 9, 2011

If your business is like most, your workplace looks vastly different than it did 10 years ago. You may have more part-time workers, or workers who job-share, work remotely some or all of the time, or work in other nontraditional ways and locales.

These new work situations can pose some real challenges when it comes to managing safety in your workforce. Here are a few things to consider when utilizing nontraditional work arrangements.

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1. Workers' comp: Workers' comp can be a challenge to manage even when workers are located at your facility. Employees who work in the field or at home are far more difficult.
   
   If you have workers who do not come to your office, be sure that you have policies and procedures in place for them to promptly report work-related injuries (and consider how paperwork is handled, and how you will be notified if the worker cannot make notification him- or herself).
   
   You must also ensure that you know how to define what is or is not a work-related injury for an employee who works from home. If you ever have a doubt, rather than assume it's not work-related, call your workers' comp insurer and have them help make that determination.
   
   If you have a return-to-work program, be sure to have policies in place for handling remote workers and their return to work so that, like your in-house workers, treatment of remote workers is consistent and fair--things like how to monitor the case and whether (and how) modified duty can be performed remotely are some things you need to address.
2. Safety training: Employees who work part-time, in the field, or from home need safety training just as much as your full-time in-house employees--and field workers probably even more so. Consider how you will deliver training to these employees. Will you have them come in to the office for training? Or can you effectively use computer-based or online training some or all of the time?
3. Monitoring safety: You are responsible for your employees' safety, which means you need to be aware of their work environments and how they are operating within those environments.
   
   For nontraditional workers, you need to find a way to ensure that your employees are following your safety policies and procedures, and that you are correcting behaviors when they are not.
   
   For example, supervisors may periodically do ride-alongs with field personnel to determine if there are any safety issues they face in the field, or come in during an evening shift when there is a lone worker to observe and discuss any safety concerns the employee may have.