How to Create Win/Win Client and Safety Consultant Relationships – What a Client Should Know Part 3: How to Enable A Successful Safety Consultant
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March 15, 2022
How to Create Win/Win Client and Safety Consultant Relationships – What a Client Should Know Part 4: An Efficient Safety Consultant
August 9, 2024
Introduction
NOTE: This is part three in a four-part series discussing what clients should know about their health and safety consultants. This blog discusses the importance of clients empowering their consultants so they are successful.
Your company uses health and safety consultants. So a strong client/consultant relationship is a crucial piece in realizing the efficiencies that come from hiring consultants. As a client, you must understand the role you play in this relationship. While some of the points highlighted in this blog series might seem straightforward, I am continually surprised when they are undervalued. In the case of this blog, are you removing barriers and providing access to necessary resources to ensure you have a successful safety consultant?
Background of a Successful Safety Consultant
Here is a short summary of my background. I have worked for consulting firms and industry (clients) in various health, safety, and environment (HSE) roles. I started my HSE career working for a smaller environmental consulting firm. For the past seven+ years, I have been operating my consulting firm, Risk Defense Inc. I have worked with clients from education, logistics, IT, transportation, staffing, environmental engineering, occupational health, construction, and oil and gas. While working in industry, before starting up Risk Defense Inc., I also got an opportunity to do some consulting for a power generation and distribution company in the Caribbean.
I have also worked as an employee/client in the oil and gas (service and producer companies), agriculture, outdoor adventure, and construction industries. I share this because I have had some valuable insights that I can share from both sides of the coin when working with clients and consultants.
Points To Consider To Have A Successful Safety Consultant
When I say "enable your consultant" or "ensure you have a successful safety consultant", you may wonder what I mean. Basically, once you have found your consultant, you need to set them up for success to ensure they can complete their deliverables in a way that satisfies both parties' needs. This comes down to:
- Removing barriers
- Providing access to necessary resources
This article discusses these points in greater detail. Scroll down halfway to read the part about removing barriers and providing resources.
Some clients think that once they have selected the consultant that their role in the project is over. Many others understand that they need to manage the consultant through to the completion of the project. The word "manage" may not be appropriate in this context, but I will use it because it is the standard business vocabulary.
It is not so much managing the health and safety consultant as it is about enabling their success by checking in to:
- Make sure the project is going to plan
- Provide new information as it becomes available
- Ensure the consultant has the necessary resources to succeed
If the project is not going to plan, one should analyze the situation to identify the root cause. If the reason is a barrier(s) that the client has control over (i.e., access to internal resources), then it is up to them to remove the barrier(s).
Why You Should Ensure You Have A Successful Safety Consultant
Client employees represent their organization and are responsible for using its resources effectively. It's not about squeezing blood from a stone but instead supporting the consultant to ensure they can complete their project efficiently and provide effective project outcomes. Below are examples are things you can do to ensure you have a successful safety consultant.
Set Your Consultant Up For Success With Required Resources
A client must ensure the health and safety consultant has access to what they need to successfully complete the project before they begin. Examples of resources you may need to provide include a company laptop (to access company applications), Wi-Fi password, access to documentation, access to personnel, etc. This should all be organized before the consultant starts the project.
In the past, when I joined a company as an employee, nothing left me questioning my decision-making capacity more than starting my first day and finding out I do not have the necessary resources to do my job from the moment I walk in the door (there are of course exceptions, but with proper planning, these will be minimal). The same holds true for a health and safety consultant.
Communicate to Enable Your Successful Safety Consultant
Ensure there are open communication lines, and they have everything they need as soon as they walk in the door. This is important for them to succeed, the project to succeed, and for you to succeed. After all, if you are responsible for the project, your reputation is also at stake.
Just because a health and safety consultant has not brought any challenges to your attention, it is your responsibility to check in and make sure. Other clients have conditioned some consultants to deal with challenges as opposed to check-in. But this is not an effective strategy as the solution to the obstacle may not be in their control and a short conversation with the client is all that needed to make them aware of the barrier so the client can remove it.
Consultants Have More Than One Client
If this does not make sense or seems overboard, please consider the following. Contractors work for various clients. If you have worked on the contractor side, then you know that each client has their own set of HSE requirements. Contractor crews can work for a dozen or more clients in a year, and yet they are expected to understand each client's set of requirements. While this might work for a contractor crew dedicated to one client, this is not a reasonable expectation for those who move around and work for multiple clients.
Similarly, consultants work for various clients, and many have been conditioned to work in a specific way that worked for one particular client. But this may not be the best way to work for you and your organization. This also relates to an earlier blog which discussed the importance of setting clear documented expectations for your consultant, but in this blog we expand on the consultant management concept a little further by stating the client should also be regularly checking in, providing access to resources, and removing obstacles.
Conclusion
Through regular communication, clients can ensure they will have a successful safety consultant by providing necessary resources either before the project beings or on day one and removing barriers before or as they come up during the project. The health and safety consultant also has responsibilities to ensure this win/win relationship is maximized. Check out my blog series on health and consultants to determine what they should do to keep this critical relationship front and center. Click here for the first article.
For more information on how to maximize client/health and safety consultant relationships and how this can benefit your company (or to discuss other ideas on how to take HSE at your company to the next level), please contact Risk Defense Inc. by filling out the contact form below.
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