Chandler Macleod's lost time injury frequency rate among its on-hire workers has dropped to 1.7 per million hours worked, and has been a significant factor in gaining market share in the WA resources sector, says CEO Ian Basser.

Basser told Shortlist OHS performance was now a critical metric for employers, and had become one of the essential factors in winning or renewing large-scale contingent workforce supply deals.

"From the boardroom down, OHS has now become a key measure for organisations and if you look at [safety] as the lens by which you should look at the culture, it affects everything that goes on in the business, in terms of engagement and productivity."

Basser said a long-term effort to improve Chandler Macleod's OHS record had seen the company's LTIFR halve in the past 12 months, after having halved in the 12 months before that.

The rate was currently at 1.7 incidents per million hours worked, he said, compared to 25 three years ago.

CMG assessed, inducted and OHS-trained each of its blue-collar temps before placing them in work, he said, and this had not only improved its OHS performance, but had helped it market its workforce management service to employers.

"A lot of clients have not gone out to tender, they've just recontracted with us, because of our ability to manage the talent for them - assessment, sourcing... rostering, payrolling and safety - it just ensures that you get much higher productivity out of the contingent workforce."

Temp hours continue to rise

Basser said WA had delivered strong growth for the company over the past year, and nationally CMG was also seeing rising temp hours in IT, call centre, office support and technical/engineering.

"A company might have, say, 20% of its workforce as contingent staff - but it went from five shifts per week to two shifts per week for that workforce, because it had to dial down during the GFC.

"Now we're starting to see those hours coming back; they're still not quite at pre-GFC levels but they're getting close."

Temp-to-perm conversions would also increase as employer confidence recovered, he added.