CONTRACTING outside help in discharging your duty of care to protect employees and others from workplace hazards is not as simple as ringing a plumber. Though your motivation for bringing in a consultant may be at least partly to lighten some of your load, the process of finding the right person requires work, especially in the preparatory stages. Before you go looking for people to shortlist, it is worthwhile doing some preliminary thinking and a little basic research. First of all, it's essential to clarify exactly what you want from the consultancy and why you are going outside to get it. "If you are choosing a consultant to avoid the challenge of developing the necessary expertise in-house, you perhaps ought to think again," says Roger Bibbings, head of occupational health at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA). Bibbings says he is not questioning the wisdom of contracting outside expertise in all circumstances, just suggesting it is always worth a little reflection to make sure you are not trying to pass on responsibilities that must remain with the employer.
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