A look at BelFlex’s safety practices for clients and contract workers
At BelFlex, we don’t just check the box on worker safety. It’s woven into our culture from the inside out. I’m the director of risk and compliance, and I’ve held this role here at BelFlex for five years, doing everything possible to protect the workers we place with clients.
According to the National Safety Council, a worker is injured on the job every seven seconds. To reduce the number of accidents, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has created a set of standards for a safe working environment, and monitoring our clients’ compliance to these is critical. We do this in four ways.
- We create awareness for compliance within our own people. When it comes to safety, knowledge is power. The regional managers, sales team and branch managers at BelFlex are OSHA 10-Hour certified. This ensures that from our very first interaction with prospective clients, we have the safety of our workers in mind.
- Beyond that initial site evaluation, our team follows up every six months with a client site survey. This is the second way we’re able to ensure safety throughout our entire partnership with a client. Our team uses these surveys as a way to monitor for new compliance concerns on site as our clients’ workplaces and practices evolve and change over time. With this new information, we’re able to provide guidance to our clients on how to reduce their risks.
- We ask our clients to complete a Physical Demand Analysis for each job description. By having these, BelFlex can evaluate the physical demands of each position and select only the most qualified candidates the first time. This step in our process prevents not only potential injuries, but also reduces turnover over time.
- On an ongoing basis, BelFlex keeps worker safety front and center with creative, themed bulletin board displays that we update quarterly. We also send out monthly newsletters on current compliance issues to ensure this important information is easily accessible to our contract workers—and to make sure they know their safety is a top priority for our team.
We take compliance very seriously and consider our best practices a competitive differentiator for our clients. But we also realize the importance of making it tangible for everyone in our organization, and, at BelFlex, that means making it a fun experience.
Beyond our regular safety initiatives, we also participated in Safe+Sound Week this past month, in conjunction with the National Safety Council and OSHA. We asked each of our offices to raise awareness for and actively promote safety for one week in these ways:
- Monday: our teams took photos of themselves wearing personal protecting equipment (PPE) like hard hats, safety vests and glasses
- Tuesday: each office created a sandwich board safety sign
- Wednesday: our employees took “safety selfies” with safety items like exit signs, action plans and fire extinguishers
- Thursday: the teams posed with summer safety items like pool floats and umbrellas
- Friday: each office created a toolkit filled with the safety items used all week
If you’re seeking temporary employment and looking to use a staffing agency, ask about their policies around worker safety. If you’re a client, your staffing partner should proactively bring ideas to the table to help you mitigate your compliance risks.
