One of our supervisors may be seconded to our client's team for six months, acting as 2nd in command of a 14-person group. The role is virtually identical to his duties with us, and he would continue to be on our payroll, with us invoicing the client. The work involves a maintenance workshop including welding & gas cutting. I was asked yesterday about H&S implications (HR are already on the case), and so far I've been thinking about:

accidents to our employee
accidents to others in which our employee is involved in a supervisory role

Competence would seem to be key here - our employee needs to be able to understand the competence of those he'll be supervising, and he also needs to understand the local procedures and how they may differ from ours. I'm thinking that (assuming his qualifications and experience are acceptable to the client) this could be achieved through a thorough induction. An agreed statement of the service we provide to the client would also be important (similar to a job description if he was employed by the client).

We already deal with accident investigations for employees working on client sites, and where we would report under RIDDOR, we'd cooperate with the client in an investigation in this case.

Does this sound reasonable, and have I missed anything vital? This could be an excellent development opportunity for our guy, it's just a new situation for us.

Thanks

I think an important point to make is your organisation remains firmly the employer of the secondee and as such should ensure the clients health and safety arrangements at least meet minimum legal requirements.

I would also suggest / agree some form of service level agreement is put in place and the secondee fully understands what his duties will be for the duration of the secondment with the host employer.

Thanks for taking the time to reply, everyone, very useful.