Regaining control of contractor onboarding with Frontline CSM

Regardless of size, most companies run into the issue of managing and ensuring compliance for contract workers. This is especially true of businesses that rely on a transient workforce to deliver goods and services to customers (e.g., field workers, technicians, etc.). The traditional approach involves outsourcing contractor management to third parties like verification platforms and safety councils. But Frontline CSM gives control of contractor onboarding back to hiring companies, so verification is faster and the data is easier to manage over time.  

Contractor verification platforms 

Platforms like Avetta and ISNetworld act as a middleman in the contractor verification process. They work on behalf of hiring companies to collect and review contractor documentation like: 

• Driver’s licenses or other forms of ID 
• Training records 
• Trade licenses or certificates 
• Work permits 

After these third parties review the documentation, they pass it to the hiring company who uses it to verify compliance. While these verification platforms sometimes offer training services as well, they mostly handle document collection and review. 

Safety council organizations 

The other side of contractor management is training compliance. Many companies turn to local safety councils to fill this gap in the process. They assign training requirements to their contractors who then go to a safety council to complete the coursework. Once they finish training, the safety council provides documentation of completion which the hiring company uses to verify compliance. 

Limitations of third parties 

This piecemeal approach to managing contractors works for lots of companies but it also has several limitations. 

First, you need both verification platforms and safety councils for a truly comprehensive process. That’s because when contractors show up onsite, their compliance information is scattered across different sources. Sometimes, using this traditional approach may not save you much time or money in the long run. 

Second, the cost of using these services doesn’t always align with your needs. Traditional platforms charge per contractor/employee for training and verification. Even for small contractors, these costs can add up quickly. There’s also the issue of lost time due to poor customer service or turnaround. Once contractors go to the safety council or submit their documents to a verification service, it’s a waiting game on your end to the get “all clear.” 

While most large contractors use safety councils and verification platforms, many of the smaller contractors don’t. So, if you’re working with local vendors who have small teams, they might not be set up for the traditional approach to work. This means that you may still end up paying for training or devoting resources to in-house verification methods. 

Lastly, the traditional contractor management model doesn’t always provide a quick turnaround. According to our CEO Ren Lu You, this disconnected approach “has the drawback of [making it] hard to do anything that well if there’s an error or if there’s information missing or something that needs to change last minute.” 

Verifying contractors through a third party means you have to wait for the information to clear, even when you’re on a short timeline. If the timing doesn’t line up well with your project, then this lag can create difficult delays. 

Imagine that a contractor shows up and they haven’t completed their training assignments. They can’t come onsite until they’ve fulfilled the requirements which causes a delay for the project. You either schedule them for an in-person class or they leave, go to the safety council to take training, and then come back. Once they return, you manually verify whether they’ve completed the training before allowing them onsite. 

So, while safety councils and verification services tackle certain parts of the process, they don’t provide a seamless solution to the problem. Because of the gap between third parties and hiring companies, the costs and burdens of contractor management still exist with this approach. 

Closing the gap with Frontline CSM 

We wanted to create a tool at Frontline that could give control of contractor management back to hiring companies. The concept behind our contractor management software, Frontline CSM, is a self-service model of onboarding, training, and verifying contractors. 

Centralized data management 

Unlike traditional providers, we facilitate the transfer of information so it’s easy for your team to verify contractors in-house without the help of a third party. Our platform provides the structure and workflows for you to: 

• Collect and review contractor documentation 
• Track expiration dates for documents 
• Create and assign training requirements 
• Review and report contractor training compliance in real-time 
• Verify contractor identification at the jobsite (via our mobile app) 

Instead of contractors sending their documentation to a third party, they upload it to their Frontline CSM portal. Once they upload documents, the system prompts you to review and either approve or reject them. 

When contractors come onsite, you can easily scan the QR code in their Frontline EHS mobile app to verify their identity. The app will tell you whether they’ve met your documentation and training requirements. 

Benefits of the Frontline CSM model 

Replacing a traditional contractor management approach with Frontline CSM allows you to: 

• Prevent undocumented or unverified contract workers from coming onsite 
• Maintain constant oversight of contractor compliance through in-house channels 
• Spend less time onboarding contractors and waiting to hear back from third parties 
• Store contractor documents and training records in a single location 
• Have complete control of contractor verification process (and the quality of it)

Another benefit of Frontline CSM is the pricing model. With traditional systems, you incur training and verification costs from either third parties or your contractors. These costs can vary widely depending on the project and contracting company. 

The Frontline system, however, is based on a flat fee pricing model. You pay for the CSM tool and then have the option to onboard and manage as many contractors as you want within the system. This means that you can grow your contract workforce without suffering exponential training and verification costs. 

Overall, Frontline CSM is a great option for companies of all sizes. Managing contractor compliance data in-house via a single system provides the flexibility that traditional methods can’t. Whether you have a handful of contractors or an entire workforce of them, it’s worth considering how a flat-fee, scalable option might help your company more in the long run.