New OSHA Injury Reporting Rule – How Bad Is It, I mean really?
by Bill Schneider
I have attended meetings with clients and industry groups where attendees share their fears about how the new Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illnesses regulation is going to do away with incentive programs and prohibit drug and alcohol testing and other scary thoughts. To these fears I say take a deep yoga breath and a shot of something strong and step back and take a look at what OSHA is trying to accomplish with the recent revisions to its Reporting Rule.
Employee Incentives
OSHA has been trying for years to eliminate employer incentive programs that discourage employees from reporting injuries, accidents and near misses (for fear of retaliation from the employer or other employees).
Back in the early days (and still today) we used to reward employees for going a specified period-of-time with no lost time incidents. This was a big deal for the departments involved and for corporate management. And, it was easy to implement. There was only one metric to track - the number of recordable injuries in any given month. And the reward was simple - ordering pizza and pop (which was usually taken care of by the front office’s admin person). How much easier could it get?
Well, we now know that these types of incentive programs, also called Lagging Safety Metrics, actually put pressure on employees to NOT report injuries because other people in their department would be mad that they weren’t going to get their free lunch.
So, OSHA wants employers to adopt Leading Safety Metrics programs that reward employees for performing positive safety-oriented activities like reporting and mitigating hazards and asking their fellow employees to remember to wear their safety glasses. Research has shown that when employees are involved in making the factory a safer place, they are more inclined to follow their own advice over the long haul.
Drug and Alcohol Policy
OSHA allows drug and alcohol testing as long as the end result does not prevent employees from reporting injuries and accidents. But, this can be more easily said than done.
Let’s look at a possible issue associated with a facility’s Drug and Alcohol Policy. The story I keep hearing is that companies who have historically adopted a policy where employees are required to get a drug test following an incident will no longer be able to do so. To illustrate, lets look at a scenario.
Employee Incentives
OSHA has been trying for years to eliminate employer incentive programs that discourage employees from reporting injuries, accidents and near misses (for fear of retaliation from the employer or other employees).
Back in the early days (and still today) we used to reward employees for going a specified period-of-time with no lost time incidents. This was a big deal for the departments involved and for corporate management. And, it was easy to implement. There was only one metric to track - the number of recordable injuries in any given month. And the reward was simple - ordering pizza and pop (which was usually taken care of by the front office’s admin person). How much easier could it get?
Well, we now know that these types of incentive programs, also called Lagging Safety Metrics, actually put pressure on employees to NOT report injuries because other people in their department would be mad that they weren’t going to get their free lunch.
So, OSHA wants employers to adopt Leading Safety Metrics programs that reward employees for performing positive safety-oriented activities like reporting and mitigating hazards and asking their fellow employees to remember to wear their safety glasses. Research has shown that when employees are involved in making the factory a safer place, they are more inclined to follow their own advice over the long haul.
Drug and Alcohol Policy
OSHA allows drug and alcohol testing as long as the end result does not prevent employees from reporting injuries and accidents. But, this can be more easily said than done.
Let’s look at a possible issue associated with a facility’s Drug and Alcohol Policy. The story I keep hearing is that companies who have historically adopted a policy where employees are required to get a drug test following an incident will no longer be able to do so. To illustrate, lets look at a scenario.
Scenario: Let’s assume that an employee is involved in an incident and is injured, but is reluctant to report the injury because he is afraid of getting fired. The injury is discovered, the employee is asked to take a drug test and tests positive for drugs or alcohol. The employer decides to terminate the employee. The employee files a complaint and OSHA investigates.
OSHA says, not so fast and suggests that the employer’s Drug and Alcohol policy actually discriminates against employees by discouraging them from reporting the incident. So OSHA decides to dig deeper into the incident. |
….. OK, I left out allot of details, but I did it on purpose because the details are what are really important to protect the company against possible OSHA fines and still be able to implement a Drug and Alcohol Policy.
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By now you can see where this is going. The company must demonstrate that its actions of firing the employee was not discriminatory or retaliatory. So how do you do that? The answer lies in the following by:
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The key here is clear and consistent documentation of disciplinary actions and consistent enforcement of safety rules to show that the employee was terminated not because he reported an injury, but because he did not follow company safety rules and failed a drug test. When a company can show that safety rules are consistently enforced across the facility, then it is likely that OSHA will close its investigation in a favorable manner.
Sound easy? Remember the old compliance program adage “if it is not written down, it didn’t happen”. It is advisable to take an objective look at your worker incident and disciplinary records and policies to see how well you are doing. Ask yourselves whether your records would stand up to this kind of interrogation. If not, it may be time to fine tune your disciplinary procedures and beef up your recordkeeping practices.
Information on the new reporting rule can be found on OSHA’s website.
Sound easy? Remember the old compliance program adage “if it is not written down, it didn’t happen”. It is advisable to take an objective look at your worker incident and disciplinary records and policies to see how well you are doing. Ask yourselves whether your records would stand up to this kind of interrogation. If not, it may be time to fine tune your disciplinary procedures and beef up your recordkeeping practices.
Information on the new reporting rule can be found on OSHA’s website.