Last week in Part 1 of this series, we talked about the advantages of hiring an outside safety and health loss services provider. We also discussed the various kinds of providers and the advantages and disadvantages associated with each. Now we'll talk about how to plan your strategy for using the services and thus pave the way for negotiating a contract that meets your needs. There's also a list of 10 Planning Tips in Tools that you can access if you're a SafetyXChange member.

Strategic Planning

Planning your loss control strategy before you begin negotiating a service contract is probably the most critical and overlooked part of the entire contracting process. Unfortunately, many companies do it in reverse. They proceed to contract negotiation without first understanding their needs. As a result, the contract negotiation dictates the strategy rather than the other way around.

Example: Let's take a company with 150 locations, decentralized management and a strong need for OSHA compliance services. The first topics the company should address with the service provider are the service options, which ones will work best for the company, how return on investment will be measured and why doing business together will provide maximum benefits to the company and its employees. Only then should the discussion turn to volume and regulatory compliance.

In fact, however, it's usually done in reverse order so that volume and regulatory compliance are the first items of discussion.

Confusing Compliance With Loss Control

Another common mistake companies make is to confuse regulatory compliance with loss control programming. This again pushes the discussion toward what services a provider has to offer, rather than what services the company needs. This is where your planning and decision-making skills become key assets at the table.

Bert Decker, author of You Have to Be Believed to be Heard, has a fundamental theory about our buying habits. He tells us that "we buy on emotion and justify with fact." If that is true (and I believe it is!), we need to minimize human error and our "risk" of buying services that may not meet our challenges. To avoid this trap, ask the service provider to outline the key benefits involved with the approach toward regulatory and loss control program implementation. These should tie into safety solutions they propose to match the needs expressed in your request for proposal.

For a list of 10 loss control service planning tips, see the checklist in Tools.

The Key Qualities to Look For

Quality, innovation, credibility and long-term relationships describe the best consultants. Working with someone who can lead by example and demonstrate independently the concepts and game plans necessary to solve your "opportunities for improvement" illustrates a quality safety and health service provider.

In a September 1995 Safety & Health magazine survey, 79 percent of those queried said they had hired consultants to assist in solving current safety and health challenges. Almost all of those surveyed recognized the value of outside expertise. Collectively, this same group described a successful consulting relationship as involving timeliness, valid statistics and, most important, positive attitude. If you can identify those qualities in a service provider, you'll be on the road to a healthy, successful relationship.

HEROES OF WORKPLACE SAFETY

Frances Perkins: Fierce advocate of workplace safety and, arguably, the greatest Labor Secretary in U.S. history.

Frances Perkins

In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt became President of the United States. One of his first appointments was Frances Perkins as Secretary of Labor. It was a stunning pick. Never before had a woman served in the Cabinet.

But Frances Perkins was anything but a token appointment. Born in Boston in 1880, Perkins was a nationally known economist, social worker and advocate of workers' safety. She was an eyewitness to the worst workplace tragedy in American history, the 1911 Triangle Shirt factory fire in New York City in which 114 workers died. Perkins watched as young immigrant women trapped by the fire stood on window sills, their hands clasped in prayer, before jumping eight stories to their death. (For more details about the Triangle fire, see SafetyXChange's Best Practices Insider, May 31, 2005).

Perkins created a national controversy in 1913 when she got married and refused to take her husband's last name. After a long legal battle, the court let her keep her own name.

At first, the unions howled when they heard that Perkins had been appointed Labor Secretary. They wanted FDR to appoint somebody with close ties to organized labor; they also wanted a man.

But it didn't take labor leaders long to discover their mistake. In addition to helping secure a 40-hour work week, social security and the minimum wage, Perkins spearheaded many of the New Deal's most important public works programs including the CCC and WPA. She also promoted laws banning child labor and promoting workplace safety.

Today, Perkins is widely regarded as perhaps the greatest Labor Secretary of all time. In 1980, the Department's HQ in Washington, D.C. was renamed the Frances Perkins Building.

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