New rules from the Occupational Health & Safety Administration (OSHA) require high-risk establishments, like an asphalt plant or a road building company, to submit 2016 injury logs electronically no later than Dec. 1, 2017.
“Depending upon how a company, facility, or establishment is classified, they may be required to start submitting these forms electronically,” says Dr. Howard Marks, National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) vice president for environment, health and safety. “Every asphalt plant and contractor needs to make this determination and the criteria can be confusing.”
Because the asphalt pavement road construction industry operates under varying industrial North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes, understanding whether a company’s production and paving operations are required to report is not necessarily straight-forward.
We hope this article helps you determine whether or not your company is obligated to report injury logs electronically.
Background on Record Keeping
Section 8 of the OSH Act says that employers are required to maintain accurate records of work-related injuries and illnesses. These are the events or exposures in the work environment that either caused or contributed to resulting conditions or significantly aggravated pre-existing injury, but this excludes minor injuries with first aid treatments.
The Improved Tracking Rule became effective January 1st 2017 and required employers with 20 or more employees to submit information from one or more injury and illness records to OSHA electronically.
The forms required are:
· Log of work related injuries and illnesses (Form 300)
· Annual Summary (From 300A) and
· Injury and Illness Incident Report Form (Form 301)
The rule prohibits employers from discouraging workers from reporting an injury or illness and requires that employee identification be redacted from the electronic reporting. The final rule requires employers to inform employees of their right to report work-related injuries and illnesses free from retaliation, which can be satisfied by posting the already-required OSHA workplace poster.
OSHA believes that the new electronical reporting rule will improve workplace safety, enhance OSHA enforcement, improve accuracy of injury and illness records and improve data collection and sharing.
Company Census
How many employees you have and how you classify them will determine what forms you need to submit to OSHA and if you need to submit them electronically. In order to do this, you first need to conduct a company census.
Now where this gets confusing is defining the size of your firm. Since the electronic reporting requirements are based on the size of the establishment, not the entire firm, your company could be broken in to several establishments and may not need to comply.
OSHA defines an establishment as a single physical location where business is conducted or where services or industrial operations are performed. A firm may be comprised of one or more establishments. To determine if you need to provide OSHA with the required data for an establishment, you need to determine the establishment's peak employment during the last calendar year. Each individual employed in the establishment at any time during the calendar year counts as one employee, including full-time, part-time, seasonal and temporary workers.
If at any point during the calendar year you had 20 or more employees reporting to a high risk establishment, you will need to electronically report your injuries.
All establishments with 250 or more employees in industries covered by the recordkeeping regulation must electronically submit to OSHA injury and illness information from OSHA Forms 300, 300A, and 301. Establishments with 20-249 employees in certain industries must electronically submit information from OSHA Form 300A only.
So hypothetically, we have a road construction company that owns/operated three mix facilities. Each facility has four operators at each establishment. There are seven members of an administrative staff at a central office establishment. There are also two paving crews with seven people who report to the central office and haul mix out of and to the jobsite.
In this case, which establishments would need to comply? The reporting rule would say that the mix facilities would not have to submit an electronic report to OSHA but the central offices would need to submit annually.
In another hypothetical, a road building company employs 260 people on paving crews, at asphalt plants, in quarries and shops and in an office. However, none of these individual establishments has more than 19 people at them. The 36-member paving crew does not report to any one location and the office staff of 25 are not defined as high-risk. Therefore, OSHA would say that this company and the facilities that it is comprised of would not meet the size threshold to fulfill the electronic reporting requirement.
Deadline Approaching Fast
The electronic reporting rule is complicated but companies should be prepared to comply by the December 1st deadline and have all the information from 2016 filled in to Form 300A and ready to submit electronically by then. After determining whether or not the rule applies to your establishment, NAPA also recommends that companies should:
· Take steps to redact details that could indicate the identities of employees in injury and illness incident reports (Form 301)
· Take greater care in determining recordability
· Conduct annual audits
· Develop online reporting ability
· Develop injury notification material and procedures
· Train employees on reporting duties
OSHA estimates companies will need 10 minutes to create an account and 10 minutes to enter their 2016 information but many are saying that time estimate is far too low. You can create an account and log your forms here: https://www.osha.gov/injuryreporting/ita/
