Key takeaways
  • Contractor induction fails on account creation: nobody sets up a login for a person who will be on site for six hours.
  • The result is a paper sign-in sheet that proves attendance but not competence, insurance or briefing.
  • Sending the induction as a link captures documents, acknowledgements and a signature without an account, and keeps it against the visit.
The record you actually need
Not who was on site, but what they were told

A signature in a visitor book proves somebody arrived. After an incident the questions are whether they were briefed, whether their insurance was current and whether the permit conditions were acknowledged. Those answers need a record with attachments, not a name in a column.

Why contractor onboarding is different

An employee is inducted once and stays for years, so an account makes sense. A contractor may be on site for a single afternoon, may never return, and may be a different person from the same firm next week. Account creation is pure overhead, so it does not happen, and the process falls back to paper.

What a link-based induction covers

  • Documents before arrival. Insurance certificate, method statement and risk assessment uploaded by the contractor in advance.
  • Acknowledgement on site. Site rules and hazards presented, with each section acknowledged rather than a single blanket tick.
  • Permit conditions. Hot work, confined space or working-at-height conditions accepted and timestamped.
  • A signature. Captured on the contractor's own phone, attached to the record.
  • Sign-off on exit. Area left safe, isolations removed, tools accounted for.

Why it works when an account would not

The contractor receives a link, opens it in their browser and completes it. There is nothing to install, no password to set and no account to forget. The friction is roughly that of filling in a form, which is what they expected to do anyway, and the output is a structured record rather than a page in a book.

Keeping it current between visits

Because the record is attached to the firm and the person rather than to an account, an expiring insurance certificate can be flagged before the next visit rather than discovered at the gate. The same applies to competency cards and training expiry.

What it costs

Nothing per contractor. On every RakuOps plan the people completing tasks from a link are not counted as users, so inducting two hundred contractors a year costs the same as inducting two.