2024's Compliance Horizon: Navigating OSHA's Expanded Recordkeeping Rule

Safety Consultant with Sheldon Primus

Links mentioned in this episode:
OSHA Recordkeeping: https://www.osha.gov/recordkeeping
Safety Consultant TV: https://www.safetyconsultant.tv/
Announcer (00:03)
Sheldon Primus. Welcome to the Safety Consultant Show with Sheldon Primus, where we blend safety smarts with business brilliance and a pitch of Sheldon's signature wit. Whether you're a safety pro, a fresh-face consultant, or just safety curious, get ready for a show that will educate, entertain, and elevate your safety game. Let's dive into the art of consulting with your safety sheriff himself, Sheldon Primus.
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Sheldon Primus (00:36)
All right, so let's dive into the show. Thanks, JR. You rock. Secret weapon, JR Kitchen. Love that man's voice. All right. T hanks, everybody, for joining me. Just this whole part of my life doing podcasting. And especially for today. Today is going to be the OSHA record keeping day. I've been doing this for a few years, and every year I like to do January as OSHA Record Keeping time because right now, it is the time for get your OSHA recordables in, for those of you in for those of you in the US. Time is a ticking away, and you also have to make sure that you get your electronic records in there, too. Those of you who are required to do electronic record keeping, this is the time that you've got to get that in. So honestly, I'd like to do the January is the time that I remind everybody about the rules and what to do and why it's necessary for those of you that are outside the US market. Don't worry, there is some stuff that you could glean from this. So I will include the regulatory ideology about why agencies will keep records for injury and illnesses because there's some backstory to this for OSHA, even as an agency themselves. That's what we're going to do today. Today is the record keeping day.
Sheldon Primus (02:11)
Before we get into that, let's see where everybody's coming from, all right? So first, let me go to my B-Cast. B-cast is telling me where everybody's listening from in order of listeners. So it looks like this is just actual downloads, okay? So I'm getting tons of download information. So number one, US, Bahrain, number two, France, Singapore, Canada, Finland, Italy, Netherlands, Thailand. It's probably my family. I got family in Thailand. Germany, UK, Ireland, Hungary, Austria, South Africa, Spain, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, Malaysia, Portugal, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Chechnya, Kenya, Korea, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Cambodia, Qatar, Israel, Denmark, India, Oman, Algeria, Rwanda, Chile, New Zealand, UAE, Uganda, Greece, Mauritania, excuse me, I said Germany, Japan, Egypt, Croatia, and Poland. Those are my listens, where everybody's coming from, if you heard your country and you want to get a little higher on that list, share it with a friend. Let everybody know who you're listening to, and hopefully, I'm going to bring some good information to them as I'm given to you because you keep coming back. So thank you so much. I appreciate it. Now, let's go to the Chartable to see the charts.
Sheldon Primus (03:45)
In my category in India, let's see. In India, I am 213 in India. Yes. Thank you so much. I'm on your chart, finally. Turkey, 103. And Obviously, this is self-serving for me, too. You know it. And if you were doing a podcast, you would be doing this, too. So okay, I admit it. It's a little self-serving to see where I am, but honestly, you would do it, too. I want to thank everybody, too. That's the other part. I want to thank you for listening. Turkey, I am 103 in my category government. That's awesome. I'm out in Chile, so that means I'm out of the Apple ranking for 200. Oh, these are the Apple rankings. I forgot to tell you guys. But, Kenya, you have been kicking butt. I am 51 in your category for government on the Apple podcast list. And then let's give you guys this changes from time to time. But for right now, this is the country that has me in the highest on the list. Oman, I am number 30 on your list. That is so awesome. Thank you and everyone else for listening to this, sharing this podcast, letting your friends know that there's some good information here so that they could share it with their friends and coworkers and those who need the message of safety, not just safety consulting, but the message of safety. I try to get that across, and then OSHA Compliance, how to grow your business, those are all the stuff that I've been helping you with. JR calls me a Safety Sherpa. I love that. That just cracks me up. Chartable has me listed, and I'm just going to give you where I am, the highest right now in In government, under Chartable, the global reach. My highest is US. Excuse me, global reach is its own category. I'm 144 in the US, government, under Chartable, I'm 120. So I'm on the US list under Chartable, and the global government reach for Chartable's listing, I am 144. So awesome. So how to get me higher would be to like and subscribe in the podcast, or whatever you're listening to me to right now, a shirt with a friend. When you see an episode that you really like, go ahead and text it over to somebody when you're not driving and it's safe for you to do so. You know our rules, right? And that's our rules. So the other thing that you really want to make sure that you do is go ahead and if you got a little bit of time, I don't ask you for much, but it'd be awesome to see some reviews on the podcast itself. I'm going to make it some changes, So thank you guys for hanging in there with me over these years, and you're seeing the changes. I'm growing, getting sponsors, all that stuff. So it's been really awesome. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
Sheldon Primus (06:56)
All right, so let's get into the episode. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to just go ahead and take this in little bite-sized pieces, all right? So first, before we say anything, I'm not going to go into all of the OSHA Recordkeeping because it's just way, way, way too long to do that. I'm only going to give you some highlights on the new rules. There's some changes this year, so I'm only going to work on that part. If you need some more help with OSHA Recordkeeping and what the US OSHA thinks about for their record keeping, especially if you're a regulator in another country, then go to osha.gov/recordkeeping. And that page has a whole bunch of information for you to find out how to comply with the US OSHA record keeping. And of course, it's not complying for you if you're outside of US. It's just you getting an idea of what the US is looking for. And then you could compare with your country and see how are we doing compared to the US market. Those of you that are under OSHA's jurisdiction, then osha.gov/recordkeeping. It's going to really give you an understanding of what OSHA is looking for and what your requirements are for you and your clients.
Sheldon Primus (08:15)
So this is the time of year where you get your clients to remember you. Send their emails out. See how they're doing with their record keeping form. Touch base and see if there's anything that you could to help them with. So this is going to be your opportunity right now to become top of mind to your clients. If you want to do a record keeping seminar, you could do that right now, especially from now until March. This is the time period for you to really be front and center, get out there to some of the agencies or even places where you know there's a gathering of professionals that have to deal with OSHA record keeping, and they're underneath the OSHA record keeping rules. This is your opportunity to grow your business right now with this one topic, OSHA record keeping webinars. All that stuff should be flying up right now.
Sheldon Primus (09:12)
All right. If you do need really detailed on working with record keeping, go to safetyconsultant TV, safetyconsultant.tv. Sign up there, use the code SC101, and I have a full video training list with this new information that I'm giving you right now, and I went through everything. I break down 1904, and then I include what is new for this year. So you could get 30 days free. If you go to safetyconsultant.tv, sign up on the web, but you could see it basically on Roku, on Apple TV, you could see it on any of your streaming services. It's pretty good for you. It's one of the things I've been doing for a while, so go ahead and sign up for that, and then you could get the details, and you could get the regulatory text. You could download the regulatory text. That's one of the blessings of having Safety Consultant TV is not only do you watch the lessons, but then you could also download the material, so you could use that for you and your clients.
Sheldon Primus (10:17)
All right, so let's go ahead and let's go to the OSHA fact sheet. This is the fact sheet on the new requirements. People who are required to record electronic records for OSHA, not everyone's required to submit injury and illness logs. That's only special industries who are high days away, restricted transfer rates, and they're not on what's called the Appendix A of Subpart B in the OSHA record keeping rule in 1904. It's a whole bunch of numbers there. But honestly, you would have to go to the OSHA 1904. There's a subpart B and appendix A in there. And it's a listing of companies that are so low in their days away restricted transfer rates that OSHA says they're exempt from record keeping regardless of size. Those people are still exempt. Those are the people that aren't going to want your service for record keeping because they're exempt. Go through that list and then you know how to target specifically people to use for people to get your record keeping service out. All right, so new requirement. This one is going to change some of the rules that we've seen before, and the new requirement is specifically related to electronic submission of records. There's three OSHA forms. Oh, my. I lost my voice. Like, if I was a teen again. Way from those days. Way, way, way, way away from those days.
Sheldon Primus (12:02)
Anyway, there's three forms. One is the OSHA 300 Log, which is like the master form that has all the info. The 300A is the summary log that's about to go up February 1st, and it comes down on April 30th, but I would wait until May 1st. And then the 301 Log, and that is where you do your first notice of injury. Who got injured? What happened? Where do you take them for treatment? So all those three forms now are going to be required for you to submit to OSHA electronically. So that is the new rule changes. OSHA wanted to do this years ago before in the US, the Trump administration, and then the rules ended up getting changed through a finding called the Volks Rule. So they did not do the intended purpose. So now under the Biden administration, OSHA is going back to the intended purpose of having the 300, 300A and 301 summary... Excuse me, 301 Log all submit electronically. So first, you're going to have to select your clients right. So if someone has an establishment, and this is all establishment-based, which is you could have a firm. A firm could have many locations. Each one of those locations is a specific establishment. This is an establishment-based regulation.
Sheldon Primus (13:30)
First, if you have 100 employees or more and you are designated as high hazard industries, and this is a list in appendix B of subpart E in the OSHA 1904, record keeping guidance, then you're going to have to keep records and you're going to have to submit this electronically. But not only your 300A, which is a summary of just numbers, the 300 Log is the one that gives OSHA more detail about the numbers and the people that were involved in the injuries. And then the 301, again, is going to give more detail to where did they go, all kinds of physical locations. And I'll tell you guys the meaning of all this and what's going to translate to, but first, I'm going to tell you the rules. So then there's another set of people who are going to be required to submit records. And that's also going to be anybody who is I'm going to read the regulatory text or at least a summary right now. OSHA retains the requirements for all establishment with 250 plus employees and industries that must routinely keep records to submit the OSHA 300A summary log. They're also going to require them to do the 300 and the 301s. So anybody who have 100 or more in high hazards industries, and then anybody who's got 250 or more in just size, and they are required to maintain OSHA records per 1904, they're also going to be on this list.
Sheldon Primus (15:09)
So now they have another set of people, and with the 300, with the 100 people who are employees, they're calling this peak employment. When you get peak employment of 100 more employees, so you could have a season, and when, let's say, you're 80 people normally, but your season gets you to 101. Now, at that point, you're going to end up having to meet this new requirement. So that's a consideration that they have there. OSHA is saying that they believe that it's going to estimated cost about $136 per year for the employees or employers to add this information in. So again, they just want to get you to administratively start putting in the 300, 301s and those logs. They want to make sure that you understand they're not collecting names of the workers with the addresses. They just really want to know the situations, and they want to end up using this information for a lot of different things. This is going to be a trigger for OSHA for many, many, many other regulatory activities. Before I give you the regulatory activity, I'm going to take a quick break, and when we come back from break, then we're going to talk about why OSHA needs this number. Right now, you just know what is going to be recorded and by whom. So next, let's talk about the Why that we want to record this stuff. The Why for OSHA.
Announcer (16:59)
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Announcer (17:39)
We now return to the Safety Consultant Show. Once again, here's Sheldon Primus.
Sheldon Primus (17:46)
All right, gang. Let's tell you the why. OSHA is using this information quite a bit. When the ITA, which is the injury tracking application, happened, OSHA is basically using this application two ways. First, they're trying to turn a lagging indicator into a leading indicator. So lagging indicator, something happens, and then a leading indicator, something happens, and then you record it, you learn from it, you do your inspections, you report something. A leading indicator is something that will be predictive in nature. So what OSHA is trying to do is when they gather this information, electronically, you now are doing data for them. So as this data gets submitted electronically, it's going to go on a cross-reference system that OSHA has. And this cross-reference system is to try to figure out under-reporting. If you go back to July 17, 2003, OSHA announced its Rule Expansion Submission Requirements. That's when they expanded this. But then Doug Parker ends up saying, and here's a quote, "Congress intends for OSHA to include reporting procedures that would provide the agency and the public an understanding of safety health problems workers face. The rule is a big step in finally realizing that objective." Then he says later on, direct quote, "OSHA will use these data to intervene through strategic outreach and enforcement to reduce worker injury and illness in high hazardous industry. The safety and health community will benefit from the inside of the information, will provide the industry at the industry level, while workers and employers will be able to make more informed decision about their workplace safety and health."
Sheldon Primus (19:45)
All right, so that's their quote. That's OSHA's goal out of this. But again, they do have a system out there that cross-references recording. I'm going to go to the OSHA budget, and this is me telling you a little bit more about OSHA's intent. The injury tracking application has a non-responder matching program. That's the terminology. That's what's called the ITA, Non-Responder Matching Program. So OSHA is the intent of the record keeping rule is to see who is not recording injuries and illnesses, and now they could go out there and get you. I hate to say it that way. It means like you put OSHA in an adversarial format. But what they're going to do is they're going to match the information that they currently have, and they're going to go to their non-response matching program, and this is going to give them an idea of who's not- they believe certain industries should be, or people should be recording instances. So now, as they're seeing good actors submitting their injuries and illnesses, then they're going to hold their list up to the people that they believe should be recording injuries and illnesses, and if those two don't match up, then they're going to trigger getting the area office involved and start doing inspections. So the record keeping then is going to not only help show who's doing the right thing, but then it's also going to point out who isn't, especially if you have multiple establishments, and one establishment is going to do a record keeping and the other ones don't, they're going to want to know why. So that's going to be the ITA Non-Responder Matching program, which identifies, and I'm reading here from the OSHA budget, potential non-responders and notifies employers of electronic requirements. Again, that's going to trigger an inspections. Here's another thing from the budget. These data will increase the agency's ability to anticipate new developments and emerging hazard trends in occupational safety and health by designing and using new statistical models to identify patterns in employers, illness, and injury data reporting.
Sheldon Primus (22:22)
That's them switching lagging indicator to leading indicator. This is going to trigger a lot more inspections, and OSHA is asking for a lot more inspectors, and they're aggressively hiring so they could do that activity. What you're seeing is the record keeping is really important for you as a consultant to try to get your clients to understand that there is some ramification. If they do not do this right, your expert experience and your expert help is going to help them out with this. And record keeping is not that easy. Okay, I'm going to fess up because even me, myself, I've had recently, within the last couple of months, two times that I actually have got it wrong. I mean, literally, I have got it wrong, and I had to call a client, and Actually, even a friend in two different areas and said, I got it wrong, and here's the way for you to really comply.
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Epic fail.
Sheldon Primus (23:26)
So honestly, you got to really be good at this. It takes some time to really understand it. And those are two things that I am not telling you guys what it is. I don't want to fess up on myself. But those are two things I should have known. And honestly, I just did not... I should have taken the time to say, Hey, let me check that. But I gave an answer before I checked it, and then it struck me like, Hmm, that may be wrong. So I talked to my buddy Kevin, who's a part of our business together. They do have my own business with Kevin Yarbrough, who is part of Shelbrough Safety. Kevin's ex-OSHA, so I called Kevin and said, Come on, help me out, bud. And he did, and I was like, I shouldn't have known that. So record keeping is tricky. There's a compliance letter out there that you could really need to know. It's on that OSHA record keeping page. You're going to scroll down towards the bottom. You're going to look for Compliance CPL 2-00-135. It's a long one, but a compliance letter is how the OSHA compliance officers comply with the rules when they go out there and they try to... They don't comply. That's how they enforce the rules. So that's a compliance letter so that it's homogenous interaction between different area offices and different employers. So that it's homogenized, so they're going to have the same OSHA experience with every co-show. So that's the intent of compliance letters. So the record keeping one is CPO 2-00-135. Very important one to know.
Sheldon Primus (25:08)
All right, gang. So that is it. Thank you so much for listening. And honestly, you guys, this is your time to really shine. Find those clients who have OSHA regulatory compliance and OSHA recordables and record keeping. You now put yourself out there. If you don't know everything about the record keeping, well, watch the video. Sign up for safetyconsultant.tv. The code is SC101. I almost forgot my own code. I'll give you 30 days free. So just focus in on that one right now. You could watch it on your home, on your Roku, on your Apple TV, and your Amazon TV, and all that. But to download the regulatory text, you have to do that online. Okay, so go ahead and sign up today. Use that code SC101. Get your understanding of record keeping and get out there and find some new clients, especially between now and March I can't remember the compliance date for the electronic record keeping. There is a March deadline. Take a quick look. I'm about to end, and here I am giving myself more work. So the deadline It should be like March, sometime in March, March 2nd. From now to March 2nd, you got your opportunity to get a few more clients. Look for those that are in the high hazard industries. That's what you're looking for. All right, gang. Go get them.
Announcer (26:54)
That's a wrap for today's Safety Show. Remember, safety isn't just about hard hats and caution signs. It's about business smarts, too. Thanks for joining us on the Safety Consultant Show with Sheldon Primus. Until next time, stay safe, stay savvy, and keep consulting like a boss. Go get them. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast or broadcast are those of the host and its guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within the past hour, only examples. It should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available, as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information. Assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the positions of the company. No part of this podcast or broadcast may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast or broadcast, Sheldon Primus.
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