Six Questions to Ask Your Current Safety Vendors
-By Micah Bongberg Google+ | @annuvia
SAN FRANSISCO, CA – With thousands of safety vendors across the country, businesses are frequently tasked with combining the skills and expertise of many different organizations to meet their corporate goals. This disaggregated approach leads to increased national inconsistencies, increased expenditures, and commonly, increased frustration. As organizations expand and contract, the large responsibility of ensuring adequate employee training, safety supplies and AED unit coverage, typically falls on the shoulders of Human Resources and Facilities Personnel. During such periods, many professionals rely on a maze of vendors to help them through these challenging times only to postpone and, perhaps, compound, their growing to-do list. Asking the following 6 questions of your existing safety vendors can help reduce future back logs while giving you the confidence needed to act nimbly should you be tasked with the impossible – doing more with less!
1. Do you offer training services in addition to selling first aid products?
2. Do you offer Automated External Defibrillators (AED units) and, if so, what make and models do you sell?
3. Who teaches your safety courses and what are their qualifications?
4. Are you able to organize safety training courses for all of my offices, nationally, and if so, how do you manage quality and ensure consistency (i.e. employees vs. independent contractors)?
5. How will I be charged and what payment options exist?
6. Do you offer advanced consultative services such as business continuity planning and, if so, how are these services integrated into our existing program?
“The ideal outcome is for organizations to learn the full potential of their vendors. If they’re satisfied with an existing relationship in one capacity, such as First Aid training, the organization should explore what else that vendor can provide,” state Micah Bongberg, President of Annuvia a national safety consulting firm. “Asking simple questions such as ‘if we use you for procurement of AED units, in addition to First Aid training, are economic savings possible?’ may be all that’s needed to reduce an aggregate budget.”
Organizations have grown accustomed to being constantly sold throughout the day by safety businesses. The problem is that such businesses are typically inquiring through narrow lenses, often unsure of the specific organizational pains. It is up to the client to maximize their returns and make the most efficient use of their investment. Therefore, the client should reach out to a hand-picked group of their favorite vendors and suppliers to see what else they’re capable of providing. Creating a menu of options when it isn’t needed is the best way to order efficiently when it is.
