The Importance of HR Management in the Construction Industry
Developing and maintaining an effective human resources plan can seem like an overwhelming task for construction companies of any size, but it’s important to follow the best practices in HR management to protect your business and stay compliant with regulations. Here are just some of the ways you can ensure that your human resources practices are consistent with industry standards and regulatory requirements in your geographic area.
1) Health & Safety
The Health & Safety Association (HSA) has created a number of regulations to help protect worker health and safety. As an employer, you must make sure that your employees follow these regulations. If you don’t, you could face heavy fines, lost work time due to injuries, or costly lawsuits. Protect yourself by reviewing current HSA regulations on construction site operations; consult your state’s government site for more information on what you should know. The best way to avoid fines is to create an environment where your workers can stay safe throughout their time at work—and then ensure they practice safe habits every day.
Even with HSA rules to guide them, some practices are universal:
1. Take inventory of all tools and equipment so everyone knows what they have.
2. Require workers to wear appropriate PPE like goggles, gloves, ear protection, hard hats, etc., no matter how small or big their tasks are (you never know when someone will accidentally cut themselves on some scrap metal).
3. Finally, pay close attention during new-employee orientation; it’s important that your first-timers understand clearly how things work on-site so there aren’t any slip-ups later on.
2) Staff Training
Certification management is a great HR tool because it allows you to train all your employees at once, and often covers a wide range of health and safety issues that employees could potentially need to know. The qualifications for becoming a certified worker vary from profession to profession. In construction, for example, manual handling & safe pass courses provide members with training and certification as they progress through their jobs.
In addition to mandatory training like these, employers can take advantage of online resources such as industry manuals or websites to help workers obtain their certification. In terms of compliance management, ensuring that your company is up to date on new government compliance is also important. Whether it’s demolition or electrical work—these all need to be managed and maintained year on year.
3) Certification Management
In construction, you’ll need to manage your company’s Certification Management system, which requires that you track and submit your employees’ safety training records. The HRLocker software platform has an area called CPD which allows you to assign certifications and reminders to make sure everything gets done on time. The system also makes it easy to see who has completed their required classes and which employees still need a little push to complete.
This way, you can plan out who will be on what job first and ensure your employees are up to standard, and properly trained before they start doing anything on-site.
Conclusion
Every company will be different, and there is no one-size-fits-all process for handling such important processes, however, having a centralised system that helps automate these time-consuming tasks makes all the difference. If you’re making a list of considerations to take into account, certification management and Health and safety should certainly be on it. After all, they affect every aspect of your business – from operations and safety to risk management and insurance coverage – and can make or break your construction operation.
