When Should You Hire an External Occupational Health and Safety Consultant?

You’re an HR manager at a company with about 50 employees. You handle employee relations, recruitment, internal policies and, more recently, a significant portion of the company’s occupational health and safety responsibilities.

You understand the basics of your legal obligations. You’ve even started developing a prevention program.

But the questions keep piling up.

A new machine needs to be installed. The health and safety committee wants to review certain procedures. Training sessions need to be scheduled. And several corrective actions are still waiting to be implemented.

You’re managing the urgent issues, but finding time to move everything else forward is becoming increasingly difficult.

Is it time to bring in an occupational health and safety consultant?

An occupational health and safety (OHS) consultant can help when a business lacks the time, expertise or resources to address certain workplace safety challenges. Their role isn’t necessarily to replace internal staff, but rather to provide the knowledge and support needed to manage risks effectively.

Here are some situations where external OHS support can make a real difference.

What Does an Occupational Health and Safety Consultant Do?

An OHS consultant is a professional who helps organizations prevent workplace accidents and occupational illnesses.

Their involvement can focus on a specific issue or be part of a broader prevention strategy.

For example, a company might hire a consultant to review a lockout procedure, assess risks associated with equipment or help organize its prevention activities.

Another organization might need support developing a prevention program, reviewing its legal obligations or improving how corrective actions are tracked.

Some projects also require specialized technical expertise, particularly in industrial hygiene, machine safety or psychosocial risk prevention.

The important thing is to clearly define what your organization needs.

A company looking for guidance on a specific issue doesn’t necessarily require the same level of support as an organization seeking to overhaul its entire OHS management approach.

1. When Workplace Safety Falls on Someone Who Already Has Too Many Responsibilities

In many small and medium-sized businesses, occupational health and safety isn’t managed by a dedicated full-time specialist.

Instead, it becomes part of an HR manager’s responsibilities, an operations director’s role or even the business owner’s workload.

This arrangement can work for a while.

Problems begin when responsibilities accumulate and the person in charge can no longer keep up with everything.

Inspections get postponed. Training is scheduled at the last minute. Documents exist, but updating them takes a back seat to other priorities.

It’s not necessarily a lack of commitment. Often, it’s simply a matter of capacity.

In these situations, an external OHS consultant can help organize files, establish priorities and carry out tasks that require additional time or specialized expertise.

The internal manager maintains overall responsibility without having to handle everything alone.

2. When Regulatory Requirements Become Difficult to Manage

Occupational health and safety requirements have evolved significantly in Quebec in recent years.

With the modernization of the province’s occupational health and safety prevention framework, many employers have had to review their prevention and worker participation mechanisms.

Depending on their circumstances, businesses may need to develop an action plan or prevention program, ensure worker participation and document certain prevention activities.

For someone who doesn’t specialize in occupational health and safety, determining exactly which requirements apply to their workplace isn’t always straightforward.

This becomes even more challenging when a company operates multiple locations or carries out activities involving different types of risks.

Employers’ responsibilities include identifying, correcting and controlling workplace hazards, informing and training employees, and organizing prevention activities.

An OHS consultant can help businesses interpret the requirements that apply to their operations, identify gaps and plan the necessary improvements.

However, one important distinction remains: hiring a consultant does not automatically transfer the employer’s legal responsibilities to that consultant.

The employer remains responsible for managing occupational health and safety within the organization.

3. When You Don’t Know Which Safety Issues to Prioritize

Imagine a company that has completed several internal workplace inspections.

It now has a long list of findings: a work procedure needs updating, certain equipment requires additional safeguards, employee training must be refreshed and ergonomic risks need to be assessed.

Everything seems important.

But the budget is limited, and managers still need to keep operations running.

Where should the company start?

This is where an outside perspective can be particularly valuable.

An OHS consultant can help assess risks, identify situations requiring immediate attention and distinguish them from improvements that can be scheduled over time.

The goal isn’t simply to produce another list of recommendations. It’s to give management a practical way to make informed decisions.

In some cases, an initial assessment is enough. In others, a more detailed analysis may be necessary.

At Santinel, our OHS Overview, OHS Diagnostic and OHS Audit services offer different levels of assessment depending on an organization’s current situation and needs.

4. When a Situation Requires Specialized Technical Expertise

Some workplace safety challenges go beyond the knowledge of a general manager or an internal OHS coordinator.

Consider a company installing a new production line.

It needs to assess machine-related risks, determine appropriate safeguards and establish procedures for controlling hazardous energy.

The operations manager understands the equipment but may not have the specialized knowledge required to perform every technical assessment.

Here’s another example: employees report significant noise exposure. The company wants to determine whether noise levels require corrective action and which solutions would be most effective.

These situations may require professionals with different areas of expertise.

Occupational health and safety covers a wide range of disciplines, including machine safety, industrial hygiene, ergonomics, psychosocial risks, lockout procedures and much more. Even a highly experienced OHS professional cannot be an expert in every field.

That’s why some projects require the involvement of several specialists.

At Santinel, it’s not uncommon for professionals with different areas of expertise to work together when supporting the same organization. This collaborative approach allows us to assess issues from multiple perspectives and recommend solutions that reflect the company’s operational realities.

The key is having access to the right expertise at the right time, rather than relying on a single individual to address every workplace safety challenge.

5. After a Workplace Accident or When the Same Problems Keep Coming Back

A workplace accident often prompts a company to review its safety practices.

Management needs to understand what happened, identify the causes and implement measures to prevent a similar incident from occurring again.

But businesses shouldn’t wait for a serious accident before seeking help.

Repeated near misses, recurring safety issues or ongoing difficulties getting employees to follow procedures may indicate that an underlying problem hasn’t been properly addressed.

For example, a company notices that employees regularly skip a step in a work procedure.

Management might decide to remind everyone of the rules again.

But it may be more useful to understand why that step is being skipped.

Is the procedure unclear? Is it difficult to follow? Does it conflict with actual working conditions?

An external consultant can help investigate the underlying causes rather than focusing solely on employee behaviour.

Of course, when an immediate hazard exists, the necessary protective measures must be taken without waiting for a consultant to arrive.

6. When Your Business Grows or Changes Its Operations

A company that had 15 employees a few years ago may now have 70.

Perhaps it has opened a second location, introduced an evening shift or installed new equipment.

Yet its approach to occupational health and safety may not have changed much.

Responsibilities are becoming less clear. Procedures no longer cover every activity, and keeping track of corrective actions is increasingly complicated.

This is often a good time to reassess how workplace safety is managed.

An OHS consultant can help clarify responsibilities, review processes and establish a follow-up system that reflects the company’s current operations.

Management commitment, worker participation, clearly defined responsibilities and well-organized prevention activities are all important elements of effective OHS management.

External support should help internal teams work more effectively together, rather than create a parallel system that employees and managers don’t fully understand.

One-Time OHS Consulting or Ongoing Support: Which Is Right for Your Business?

It’s worth considering this question before requesting a quote.

Not every organization needs the same level of support.

At Santinel, our OHS Consulting Hours Package is primarily designed for organizations that already have a prevention structure in place but need occasional specialized assistance.

Our Subscription-Based OHS Support is better suited to companies that require regular guidance to organize, manage and improve their workplace safety practices.

The main difference comes down to how frequently support is needed and the scope of the work involved.

A business can start with a one-time consulting assignment and adjust its level of support as its needs evolve.

Is It Better to Hire an In-House OHS Specialist?

There’s no single answer that works for every business.

A large industrial organization may have enough day-to-day OHS responsibilities to justify employing a dedicated internal health and safety team.

A smaller company, on the other hand, may only need a few specialized interventions throughout the year, making a full-time position unnecessary.

There’s also a third option: combining internal and external resources.

For example, a company can keep an internal OHS coordinator responsible for managing prevention activities while bringing in external specialists for certain projects.

This approach offers an important advantage. Even an experienced internal OHS professional cannot possess all the expertise needed to address every safety challenge within an organization.

By working with a team of external specialists, the company gains access to complementary skills while maintaining valuable knowledge of its operations internally.

It can also access different types of expertise as needs arise, without having to develop every specialized competency in-house.

Before making a decision, consider how much time your organization spends on OHS activities, how frequently specialized expertise is required and which responsibilities should remain internal.

The cost should be evaluated based on the scope of the services and the expertise available, not just the hourly rate.

How Do You Choose the Right OHS Consultant?

The first thing to consider is whether the consultant has experience with the specific challenges your company is facing.

If you need help with machine safety, ask about their expertise in that field.

If your goal is to improve your overall prevention practices, make sure they understand the regulatory requirements and operational realities of your industry.

It’s also worth asking whether the consultant can rely on other specialists when a project falls outside their area of expertise.

Workplace safety issues often involve multiple disciplines and may require different skills at different stages.

You should also clarify what the consulting assignment will deliver.

Will you receive a report? Updated procedures? An action plan? Recommendations presented to management? Support implementing corrective actions?

Two proposals may look similar in terms of price but include very different services and deliverables.

Finally, pay attention to how the consultant works with your team.

A recommendation can be technically sound, but if it cannot realistically be implemented in your workplace, it’s unlikely to produce meaningful results.

Good OHS consulting should account for the organization’s operational constraints while ensuring that workplace safety requirements are met.

What If You’re Not Sure Whether You Need an OHS Consultant?

You don’t have to wait until your organization is overwhelmed to assess its workplace safety practices.

Start by looking at what’s already working.

Are OHS responsibilities clearly assigned? Are planned prevention activities being completed? Are corrective actions being tracked? Do you know which safety issues should be prioritized over the coming months?

If you can answer these questions confidently and your prevention activities are progressing as planned, your current approach may already be meeting your needs.

But if several answers remain unclear, an initial assessment could be worthwhile.

Santinel’s free OHS self-assessment questionnaire can help you take a first look at your organization’s situation.

And if you’d like to go further, one of our advisors can help determine whether a specific consulting assignment, an OHS consulting hours package or ongoing support would be the best fit.

Getting External Help Doesn’t Mean Losing Control of Workplace Safety

Hiring an external OHS consultant doesn’t necessarily mean your company is doing a poor job managing workplace safety.

It may simply mean that a particular issue requires specialized knowledge, your organization’s needs have changed or your internal resources need to focus on other priorities.

What matters is choosing support that addresses a real need.

A consultant can help you gain perspective, establish priorities and move forward with safety projects that have been on hold for too long.

And when several areas of expertise are required, working with a team of specialists can provide a more complete and coordinated approach.

Ultimately, workplace safety must remain part of your organization’s daily operations, with active involvement from management, supervisors and employees.

Wondering whether your organization could benefit from external OHS support? Explore Santinel’s OHS consulting and support services, or contact our team to discuss your needs.