Covered employers must post the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Form 300A between February 1 and April 30, 2017. Form 300A is a summary of the total number of job-related injuries and illnesses that occurred during a single year at each workplace. The notice should be posted in a conspicuous location where notices to employees are usually posted. Employers will want to make sure that the posting is not changed, vandalized, or covered by other material.
The second page of OSHA’s Form 300A is a summary where employers must fill in the total number of job-related injuries and illnesses that occurred in 2016 and were logged on the OSHA Form 300 Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses. It also requires information regarding the annual average number of employees and total hours worked during the calendar year. Employers may enter “zero” on the total line if there were no recordable injuries or illnesses during the relevant year.
Employers may want to note that a company executive must sign and certify the Form 300A. The company executive who signs the form can be: (1) any officer of the corporation; (2) the highest-ranking company official working at the establishment; (3) the immediate supervisor of the highest-ranking company official working at the establishment; or (4) an owner of the company if the company is a sole proprietorship or partnership.
Employers with 10 or fewer employees and employers in certain low-hazard industries are partially exempt from routinely keeping federal OSHA injury and illness records, including the annual Form 300A. To determine whether your organization operates in a low-hazard industry that may be partially exempt, look at the list of exempt industries on OSHA’s website. Employers may also want to remember that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics may still select exempted employers to participate in an annual statistical survey.
Furthermore, all employers covered by the OSH Act must report work-related employee fatalities to OSHA within eight hours. This deadline extends to 24 hours for work-related in-patient hospitalizations for care or treatment, amputations, or losses of an eye. If you call an OSHA area office to report such an injury and cannot speak directly to an individual working for the administration, don’t leave a voice mail message or send a fax. Instead, call OSHA’s 24-hour national hotline at (800) 321-6742. Voice mails left at this number are stored in OSHA’s records with dates. You can also make the required report by electronic submission on OSHA’s reporting page.
