When the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill, it changed the face of businesses overnight. With uncertainty rising and government and health guidelines changing by the hour, many Australian businesses have pivoted to outsource as much as possible.
Outsourcing has been common practice across many industries for decades. Businesses who can lower their overheads and show their ability to adapt as required are the ones surviving these tumultuous times. However, when upscaling your workforce with external providers, there is room for error and increased risk. With new people arriving on your sites daily, most of them external contractors and suppliers, do you know with certainty that these are the right people to get the job done?
If a Work Health and Safety Inspector came knocking on your door, would you be able to answer this simple question: who’s in your yard?
Increasing your contractor workforce, also increases your risk—especially if you don’t do your due diligence to make sure everyone on site is compliant. Without a rigorous compliance system and site access control, you can be left open to potential breaches in Work Health and Safety regulations.
Not only does this increase your risk of workplace accidents and injuries, it can result in fines of up to $300,000 for an individual, $600,000 for a person conducting a business or undertaking, or $3,000,000 for a body corporate. You can also face imprisonment.
So where does this leave you? Needing a robust system to give you certainty and insight. Now a digital workforce management solution should come into play.
And it’s something Pegasus can help you with.
Managing Your External Workforce
With decades of experience, we’ve worked with clients across industries with large contracting workforces to help them manage their risk and compliance. Among Australia’s largest manufacturers, with a complex and large workforce, is Visy.
In the high-risk industry of manufacturing, Visy needs to ensure workers arriving at their sites are qualified to undertake their roles. This is even more important when it comes to their total maintenance shutdown (MSD) which happens at their site in Tumut every year.
Each annual MSD brings in hundreds of specialist trades and engineering contractors to the small rural town of Tumut. They come from around Australia and the world to fill 30 types of work roles for two weeks of intensive labour.
Helping Visy See Who’s In Their Yard
We’ve been managing workforce compliance for Visy since 2016. The Pegasus system and managed service collects documents, insurances, licences and more to verify against the specific standards. With our learning management system, Visy issues online training for contractors. This way, they’ve completed their inductions BEFORE they arrive on site.
This is the key. Any worker who arrives at site and is not compliant in the Pegasus system is held up at the gate. If non-compliant contractors attempt to access site during the MSD, it can cost Visy millions of dollars in downtime.
Because of this, we work extremely closely with the team at Visy in the months leading up to the MSD to ensure all contracting companies and workers attending are compliant and ready to work.
“We had significant delays when workers arrived in the past without the correct inductions or paperwork. To a very large degree that’s completely eliminated now thanks to Pegasus pre-screening everyone,” said Grant Crosley, Reliability and Maintenance Manager at Visy.
It’s one of our most important offerings. We don’t just help to get your workforce compliant; we keep them compliant to ensure you don’t have any hold ups or delays. And to keep your risk managed.
Do You Know Your Risks?
In the 2020 MSD, at its peak there were up to 1,500 people on site at Visy Tumut. Can you imagine not knowing which of these people are or are not qualified to do their job?
When you aren’t across who’s in your yard, you’re exposing your business to a variety of safety breaches.
- Workers unqualified for their role
- Workers unqualified to use machinery
- Safety procedures not followed
- Expired trade licences
- Lapsed insurances
- Incorrect working visa
And this is just scratching the surface.
Where to from here?
You need to know who’s in your yard. You need to know everything you can about the people working for you. It’s the only way to manage your risk and keep your people safe.
As workforce management experts, Pegasus can help to manage and maintain the competency and compliance of those working for you. With all the data collected into your Pegasus platform, that’s verified by our in-house Data Verification Team, you will know who’s in your yard at all times.
Even better, you’ll know that you’re doing everything you can to maintain a safe working environment where your risk is managed.
Talk to Pegasus today to invest in safety for your organisation.
