ForConstructionPros.com

Until recently the responsibility for keeping employees safe on the job sat squarely in the lap of the employer. Contractors were responsible for safety training, identifying, correcting, and monitoring potential safety concerns, providing proper safety gear, and for carrying proper workers' compensation insurance.

But as the business world has become increasingly complex a new approach to employee management — Professional Employer Organizations (PEO), or basically employee leasing — has become a new player in the market. And thousands of business, including contractors involved in pavement maintenance and reconstruction, have turned to PEOs to help simplify the employee management aspect of their business. But one aspect of management can't be turned over to the PEO, and that is safety.

Traditionally PEOs have worked to make sure the safety responsibility remained with the client, in the case of the pavement maintenance industry that client is the contractor. But as a result of licensing and registration requirements in a number of states, some of that safety responsibility for safety has been shifted to the PEO.

And while most PEOs understand and support the efforts of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), they didn't understand the relationship between OSHA responsibilities and workers compensation. Basically, OSHA, a federal program, places requirements on employers to provide proper safety training, a safe worksite, and safe equipment to their employees. Workers' compensation, on the other hand, involves state statutes that promote safety in the workplace but also provide a means to compensate workers injured on the job. As an employer, PEOs are responsible for employee safety as much as the contractor is; it is the contractor, however, who foots the bill for the workers' compensation costs.

So when working with a PEO here are seven steps you can take to make sure you're providing effective safety measures that help keep your company in compliance and also control insurance costs.