For your startup business to succeed, investing in your employees is as important as your products. That includes keeping them healthy during their tenure. However, with all the work that comes with running the business, you might have difficulty providing that to your team.
This is where outsourcing your occupational health services can be a great option to consider. Come with us as we discover how this strategy works and how you can get more out of it through Virtua Solutions’ help.
How Outsourcing Occupational Health Works
At their simplest, occupational health programs are the collection of various programs aimed at ensuring the safety of employees at work. Its main goal is to deal with potential diseases and injuries that they might encounter while working.
The whole program can encompass the following elements.
- Worksite analysis: Review the various procedures you employ and the potential hazards they might pose.
- Planning: The development of your company’s health and safety standards and how you implement them into your processes.
- Incident reporting: Your occupational health and safety program should make it easy for everyone to report incidents and issues promptly.
- Training: The program should provide for the training of all company members on various safety procedures and health protocols.
- Risk assessment: you need to have a risk assessment strategy to identify potential health concerns and create early responses to them.
- Certification: The program also needs a third party to certify its health processes. That helps build confidence in it.
Even with these general components, your occupational health and safety program can vary in its implementation. Different factors will affect this, such as the industry you are in and its standards. That affects how you will outsource part or the entirety of the program.
The Benefits Of Outsourcing Your Occupational Health And Safety Program
Your startup business occupational health and safety program can be rather complex. Outsourcing offers several key benefits that make running such a program a lot easier.
Better Clinic Selection And Management
When handling occupational health and safety on your own, it can be tempting to just go with any clinic. However, outsourced management teams employ an extensive review process to select the providers that will deliver the health services. That ensures you are getting high-quality services from the get-go.
Image from Clinic Design.
Additionally, the outsourced team will be the one managing the relationship with the clinic for you. They will set up the appointments with the clinic for consultation. The provider will also handle all the paperwork to ensure that it gets the relevant medical records for each employee.
Ensuring Legal Compliance For Your Startup Business
There is also plenty of legal work to ensure that your occupational health program is within regulations. However, since this requires constant monitoring, you might not be able to oversee it frequently.
An outsourced team can do this in the background. Furthermore, it will be monitoring changes in regulations and making adjustments as needed. With that, you can ensure that your program is always in compliance.
Providing Better Startup Business Employee Education
Image from Personnel Today.
Effective employee education is also crucial for your occupational health. The outsourced management team will facilitate the various seminars and training sessions to help your team members better protect themselves. They will also help your team better take responsibility for protecting each other.
How Your Startup Business Should Outsource Occupational Health
With all the things that have to be taken care of, outsourcing your occupational health and safety program needs to be strategic. The first thing that you need to think about is what parts of the program to outsource.
The trick here is to outsource only the tasks that your human resources team cannot handle on its own. For instance, clinic management will require more expertise than just organizing schedules. You will also need specialized medical knowledge to understand the offers made by the clinics.
Image from Safety Culture.
You might also want to outsource support duties relevant to the occupational health program. These include clerical work such as organizing and updating employee information. These are less specialized and you can readily send them out to a separate provider.
Getting The Right Provider For The Work
Like other forms of outsourcing, you need to know how to choose the right provider. Besides the general criteria for getting an outsourcing partner, your startup business should consider the following specific elements.
Network Of Clinics
It would always be a good idea to go for a provider affiliated with a large number of clinics. That gives you a lot more flexibility in meeting the health requirements of your company. But you should also check the distribution of these clinics.
Here, you want to have them accessible from your site locations. That way, your team doesn’t need to go far for checkups and other medical needs. The outsourced management team should provide you with a complete list of the clinics they are affiliated with.
Coverage
It is also vital that you look into the provider’s full set of services. While you might need only a few of these services this time, there is no telling if that will still be the case in the future. Thus, you want a provider that can quickly expand their services to cover your current needs.
image from KBI Benefits.
Note that this will require some advanced planning on your part. You will need to anticipate what potential health issues your startup business will face. You can also consult your employees to know what health services they want or need.
Helping Your Startup Company Keep Your Team Healthy
While Virtua Solutions is not a dedicated occupational health provider, we are ready to deliver comprehensive support for your OSH program. Our expert virtual assistants will help you manage all employee records and ensure that all medical information is correct.
They can also serve as your contact with health care providers. Our agents will handle the scheduling of checkups and other medical appointments. They can also assist during onsite health inspections.
Ensuring the health and safety of your startup business employees should not be hard. With Virtua Solutions by your side, you can execute an effective occupational health program for them. Contact us today to learn more about what we offer.