Ensure Compliance with OSHA’s New Recordkeeping Rules

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Warehouse worker in forkliftIf you are the manager responsible for ensuring workplace safety, it’s up to you to minimize the risk of injury and illness to your workers.   And this does include any / all temporary workers.

Companies need to treat temporary workers just as they would existing employees. Temporary staffing agencies and host employers share control over the temporary worker.  Therefore, they are jointly responsible for the temp worker’s safety and health. This means that both employers need to comply with all relevant OSHA requirements.

Snelling knows this, and we are here to help.  We work as a trusted consultant to all our clients to ensure that each employer’s knows their role in protecting employees.

This is needed because the rules keep changing.  For example, on January 1, 2015, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) enacted new rules on tracking workplace injuries and illnesses. These changes dramatically widen the rule’s reach and place additional reporting burdens on employers.  

In a nutshell, there are two key changes:

  • OSHA changed the way it determines exempt industries, due to the relatively low occupational injury and illness rates in certain industries. The new OSHA rule relies on North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) and injury and illness data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) from 2007, 2008, and 2009. It expands previously exempted employers under its coverage. However, the new rule does retain the exemption for any employer with ten or fewer employees, regardless of their industry classification, from any record keeping requirements.  Use your NCAIS code to check your exemption status and determine if your company is included in the new requirements.
  • The list of severe work-related injuries that all covered employers must report to OSHA has been expanded. The revised rule retains the current requirement to report all work-related fatalities within 8 hours , but it adds the requirement to report – to OSHA – all work-related in-patient hospitalizations, amputations and loss of an eye within 24 hours.

When you utilize temporary workers from Snelling, we are the employer of record for our temporary and contract employees.  Because of this, we will work with you to provide a safe work environment for our temporary employees.  OSHA recommends that both temporary staffing agency (us) and the client (you) set out each party’s respective responsibilities for OSHA compliance in their contract, in order to avoid confusion.

However, communication is important as well.  Communicate safety plans ahead of any / all start dates.  Work with us to determine any training to adequately prepare incoming contingent workers.  Finally, let us know anytime one of our temporary workers sustains injury on the job.

Knowledge and communication are the keys to a safe workplace.  So let’s get started.  Locate your local Snelling office today.