Avoiding common OSHA recordkeeping mistakes

Each year, all affected employers need to finalize their OSHA 300 log data about work-related injuries and illnesses that required medical treatment beyond first aid.

The 300 logs need to have all of the numbers tallied for days away and restricted duty cases along with the 300A summaries that specify the average number of employees for the previous calendar year and the total hours worked by all employees.

When completing these forms, it is important to know some of the most common OSHA recordkeeping mistakes that could result in enforcement action.

The top five are as follows:

1) Not keeping an OSHA 300 log and posting a 300A summary even though you are required by law. The most common reason some companies can avoid having to keep these logs is the size of the organization. OSHA states that employers with 10 or fewer total employees for the entire calendar year need not keep these logs, but a lot of smaller employers have broken that “10-employee rule” by hiring temporary and/or seasonal labor through the previous year. OSHA says the exemption for small companies does not apply if you EVER have more than 10 workers on the payroll at any time the previous year.

2) Only counting company workdays on the lost time and restricted duty columns of the form. Prior to 2001, this was the way you were supposed to count the days – meaning that if someone was injured on a Monday and did not return to work until the following Monday, you would only count the working days missed (you would exclude the weekend if it was not a normal work day). In this case, you did not count the Monday of the injury, but you would count the four other workdays the employee was scheduled to work, but could not come in. This method has not been legal for the past 15 years!

Current OSHA standards state that you must count all calendar days the worker did not return to work whether she or he was scheduled to work them or not. The proper tally of the case above would be to skip the day of the injury (that is always done in every recording case) and then add up every calendar day that was not worked by the employee (Tuesday through Sunday) for a total of six days. Keep in mind that holidays, weekends and vacation days all count.

It is no longer acceptable to have a surgery scheduled on a Friday evening and have the worker recover on the two weekend days and get back to work on Monday without any lost time/restricted days. The “I will take a week vacation to heal up post-operation” method is not a legal way get out of tracking lost or restricted days either. Also note that tracking of lost or restricted workdays stops when 180 days is reached. Six months is long enough for OSHA to get the picture that the injury or illness was a bad case.

3) Not reporting work-related injuries from employees who are working from home or traveling for business related events. If your employee is on an airplane on a business trip out of town and injures his or her shoulder while lifting a bag into the overhead compartment, then it would be a recordable injury on your log. The worker would not have been on that airplane if he or she were not required by the employer to travel for business, so it is considered a work-related injury.

If you allow an employee to work from their home, you may still have scenarios where an injury in their home environment may trigger and OSHA recordable injury: these scenarios are where the work itself causes an injury or the illness, NOT the home environment.

For example: the boss lets you take five file boxes home to work on for the next few days to meet a deadline. If you injure your back while lifting and carrying the boxes up the stairs to your home office, this could be work related – you would not have hurt your back if you were not carrying work-related materials in your home. Scenarios like tripping on a toy that a child has left on the stairs while carrying a file box are clearly not work related. This is because the toy on the stairs situation is purely related to the home environment that the employer has no control over.

4) Not keeping the right number of logs in your records. OSHA requires a separate 300 log and 300A summary for each business establishment. Companies that have multiple locations must have a separate set of records for each location if those locations are expected to be in operation for one year or longer. In the case of a construction company that has two offices and 10 projects, five of which are expected to run a year or longer, you would need to keep seven sets of logs: two for the offices and five for the projects that are running a year or longer. The other short-term projects can either be lumped into their own additional log or the office that is responsible for the affected project can enter them into their log.

NOTE: It is possible for a company to lump several locations together under one set of logs only if all of the requirements are met under OSHA definitions.

5) You are not able to provide a copy of your establishment’s 300 log within a four- hour timeframe if requested by OSHA. The law requires that employers provide copies of their 300 log and 300A summaries to their compliance officers within four business hours. Many of the establishments I have inspected would be hard-pressed to present a proper package of records to the officer within half a day. However, my experience has shown that it is rare that OSHA will ever demand it within the four-hour time frame – most compliance officers will ask for the last three to five years of records and will give you several days to submit them. But they are absolutely allowed to demand them within four business hours if they feel it to be necessary.

Remember that the OSHA 300A summary sheets need to be posted starting February 1 in a place where all employees are able to view it. The posting must remain in place through April 30.

Please contact me at fwilton@fdrsafety.com if you have any questions related to OSHA recordkeeping.