This is why organisations find it useful to have a contractor management system to help manage complex needs.
What is a contractor management system?
As the name suggests, a contractor management software is used to manage contractors working within the organisation’s premise. Features such as pre-qualification, induction, and compliance check are included to ensure both organisations and contractors are adhering to regulatory requirements.
Elements of contractor management system
1. Contractor onboarding
Having a proper contractor onboarding process is crucial to help them get started in their roles sooner, prevent poor performance and ensure compliance with key regulations.
A contractor onboarding process focuses on the administrative aspect, includes pre-qualification background checks to assess their competency for the role, and requests for relevant licences. Setting up entry passes for third party providers is also completed at this stage to grant them entry into specific locations of your organisation’s premise.
2. Induction
Inductions are conducted to integrate contractors into the organisation.
Contractors are also equipped with knowledge pertaining to health and safety rules which help to reduce security and safety risks.
While it is ideal for contractors to undergo physical inductions, facilities are also turning to online induction as an alternative.
Some benefits associated with online inductions include reduced operational costs, contractors having greater learning flexibility, and ability to deliver consistent messages to all external vendors.
3. Risk management
When organisations hire contractors, risk management is one of the integral parts in a contractor management system.
This enables institutions to prepare for various scenarios and avoid catastrophic events. For instance, risk management in healthcare facilities can help staff adapt quickly during virus outbreak to contain the spread.
We can breakdown risk management into three broad steps:
- Risk assessment and analysis
This requires you to have an in-depth understanding of your business operations. Next, list down all the possible risks your business may encounter and its corresponding consequences.
- Risk evaluation
At this stage, evaluate the likelihood and severity of the different risks your organisations may face. Afterwards, prioritise higher severity risks which are likely to happen.
- Treatment and exposure
The last step involves implementing actionable policies and procedures to manage risks. You should also revisit the policies to ensure they are up to date and relevant.
4. Contractor compliance
The last element of a contractor management system looks at contractor compliance. Contractor compliance is the process of ensuring your contractor acts in accordance with the government and organisation’s requirements.
The compliance process aims to:
- Ensure the engagement process with third party vendors is in accordance with the regulatory standards.
- Safeguard your organisation and staff against liability risks.
- Make sure the contractors are adhering to regulatory requirements.
There are four steps to this process – contract compliance, evidence requirement, clear communication, and monitoring and audit.
Benefits of contractor management system
1. Reduced legal risks, costs and scaling operations
Organisations tend to have multiple contractor engagements within the same period. While it may be easy to oversee 10 contractors, will you say the same when you have 50 contractors or more?
Thus having a centralised system to manage them becomes important as it allows you to scale your operations.
When it comes to contractor management, the adoption of the software provides your staff with a single source of truth. This makes it more effortless for them to manage contractors since everything is stored in a single system. As a result, your organisation can cut the cost of hiring additional staff to manage your pool of contractors.
Furthermore, non-compliance can result in hefty fines or institutions may find themselves in a lawsuit. This is when having a contractor management system comes in handy – it aids your organisation in lowering compliance related risks by ensuring contractors stay compliant.
2. Efficient compliance management
We all know the process of engaging with contractors is complicated since there are a lot of documents to handle. As such, ensuring compliance becomes a difficult task.
However, we can simplify this complicated process with a contractor management system.
From a contractor perspective, they can do away with manual documentation and easily upload the required documents as per corporate and regulatory requirements.
From an organisational perspective, the software helps to consolidate all the data, making it easier for retrieval and counter-checking. This also translates into greater efficiency when pinpointing areas of improvement for contractor compliance.
Besides, compliance is not a one-time process. Government regulations can evolve and criteria for renewal can change. By having such a system, it allows you to send notifications to relevant parties to request for the latest information. This also makes it easier for contractors to stay on top of the requirements.
3. Contractor assessment
A good contractor is hard to find, especially one who has high compatibility with your organisation. Hence, it is important to identify who they are in order to deliver residents or patients with high quality care.
Although manual assessment is possible, it will gradually become an overwhelming workload when you have multiple contractors.
The contractor management system is a great tool for assessing contractors. For instance, you may evaluate them based on:
- The number of hours they have worked
- Are they in the designated locations during work hours
- Whether they are compliant with the standards
Even if your organisation is in for a manual assessment, the contractor management system can speed up the process with an initial filtering. From there, you will know who to pay more attention to during the evaluation, making it a more efficient task.
How Zipline can help you
With our experience of working with over thousands of facilities like yours, we understand what you are looking for and we can offer you our expertise.
Our contractor management system is capable of assisting your organisation in overseeing your contractors through customisable workflow.
Our unlimited document types allow contractors to easily upload their documents. This reduces the risk of ruining the formatting which comes with converting documents. With that said, organisations can set the preferred document format they wish to receive it in and control the validity period.
We also offer pre-registration for contractors to ensure they are compliant before they enter your organisation’s premise. Now, they can convert the saved time from checking in to churning out quality work for you.
Besides, our 360° compliance with gated check-in is a key function in safeguarding your facilities from non-compliant contractors. When coupled with our powerful reporting tool, it makes the auditing process painless. What’s more, you get to confidently demonstrate compliance.
In summary
Engaging with a contractor does not stop at signing a contract, it goes beyond. However, we tend to neglect the impact of the subsequent process making compliance challenging.
Through Zipline’s contractor management system, you can easily resolve those issues, ensure compliance and increase contractor satisfaction when they work at your facility.
To get started, simply chat with us to learn more about our software and how it can assist you!
