OSHA Electronic Recordkeeping Explained at ASSE 2017

Gary Lopez, CSP, held a session to help explain why OSHA made changes to its final rule regarding recordkeeping.

DENVER -- On the final day of the expo at ASSE's Safety 2017, Gary Lopez, CSP, from A.J. Gallagher Risk Management Services, presented a session that explored the new OSHA electronic recordkeeping final rule and why OSHA thinks the standard will improve workplace safety.

Lopez, the company's director of Loss Control Services and a 2017 Fellow of ASSE, started his presentation with the history of recordkeeping rules, establishing the difference between standards (meant for remedial tasks) and regulations (meant for administrative tasks, such as the recordkeeping). The new standard explicitly says that a company or organization must keep a 300 log, a 301 report of the incident, and must post the 300A annual report.

A big tenet of the new rule is transparency and openness. By requiring companies to turn in data with names attached, OSHA believes the publication of this information will lead to better results. Companies will now be held accountable for their reputation in a public forum, as well as benchmark performance when compared to similar organizations.

Lopez ended his session by highlighting the three main components of the regulation: employers must inform employees of their right to report injuries free of retaliation, reporting must be reasonable, and employers may not retaliate for said reporting.