1 minute read
4.8. Partnership arrangements
4.8. Partnership arrangements
According to duty of care experts, employers cannot delegate their duty of care responsibilities to other organisations39, which means that when organisations second staff to partners or sister organisations, ultimate duty of care responsibility still lies with the employing organisation. Most key informants stated that strong partner due diligence processes before entering into secondment agreements is important. Contributors to this research stated their organisations would not second staff if their due diligence processes found that the partner does not meet the appropriate safety and security standards.
Some key informants stated that while strong due diligence was a requirement on paper, in practice, this could fall short of the ideal and was highlighted as an area that required improvement. Some organisations that contributed to this study will delegate day-to-day safety and security risk management of seconded staff to the partner organisation, but in case of an incident, the employing organisation’s crisis management response and insurance policies would come into effect.
Some key informants stated that where there are gaps identified within the partner, even if there were no plan to second staff, their organisation would endeavour to work with the partner to improve their safety and security risk management as part of a broader commitment to improving local capacity. It was also felt that although there was no legal duty of care towards local partner staff, there was an ethical duty of care to improve the safety and security of local partner employees.40
Against this background, the cinfo working group defines duty of intervention as:
An employer’s duty to intervene in response to incidents, complaints, and non-compliance in accordance with risk management processes. This includes intervening when it comes to partnership arrangements.
39 Merkelbach and Kemp (2016). 40 Linked to this is the issue of employees of subcontractors and third party liability. Reference: Pels Rijcken and Droogleever Fortuijn (2015).
