How Do you Choose Your Contractors?
It’s said that imitation is a form of flattery, but we were not impressed this month when we found some of Tundra Rescue’s pictures showing members of our team, at our work sites, on another company’s website.
This other company had obviously done a quick image search on some of our work competencies like high angle and confined space safety, and they apparently thought our pictures would look nice on their site as well as ours.
We aren’t going to name them (and we are of course taking steps to follow-up on the misuse of our copyrighted material, too), but this experience led us to think about vetting, compliance and the idea of how you can trust the people you are working with as contractors or sub-contractors.
If a company is actively stealing pictures from someone else and using them to demonstrate their competence in a particular field, it doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t do the work they are claiming they can do; but at a minimum, it does show a willingness to cut corners and a lack of integrity. Neither of these are desirable characteristics at all in a field where diligence is so critical, and where trust and confidence, both at a corporate level and on work sites amongst all the stakeholders, are so important.
If a company is stealing photos, then it leads to asking the question “Where are they getting the more critical but more difficult to obtain items that are necessary to support their work?” For example, things like their policies and procedures – or their equipment.
So how does a contractor company prove its reliability?
Health and safety theory suggests that the competence of individual workers can normally be ascertained by looking at a mixture of experience, qualifications, knowledge and currency.
That’s how we vet our own staff at any rate, and we think the same ideas are broadly applicable at the organizational level, too.
Tundra Rescue has passed rigorous, lengthy vetting processes to be able to work with some of our regular customers. Sometimes this has been carried out through designated third-party compliance organisations, and on other occasions, our customers have their own internal processes.
Either way, it’s actually our pleasure to do this because we like being given the chance to demonstrate our competence, and we recognise that our ability to pass challenging compliance processes is one of things that differentiates Tundra Rescue from others in the industry.
Of course, the other side to having subject matter expertise in certain areas is also being honest about what we can’t do, and it is one of our principles to be just as open about when we can’t help our customers as when we can. In some situations, rope access might not be the optimal solution, or there might not be a need for a confined space rescue team on a particular work site. At Tundra Rescue, we will let you know as soon as we realise something like this because creating supportive, long-term relationships of trust with our customers is far more important to us than upselling any individual task.
We understand that not all organizations are familiar with all the ways rope access can be used or how confined space safety regulations should be applied, so if you are trying to solve a difficult access or safety problem, please do get in touch. If we think we can help you, we will let you know, and we will be upfront about what our proposed solutions will look like. Alternately, if we think we cannot help you at this time, we will tell you without pretending we are competent in areas that we are not.
You can rest assured that Tundra Rescue is a trusted leader in the industry, working with you for the success of your company.