The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will occasionally come to visit organizations for periodic inspections. More often than not, OSHA typically visits a company in response to an incident or a complaint. In either case, it’s a good idea to make sure you have your training inline with the their requirements. Also, you should prepare your records for review in case the inspectors should ask. Here are several key reminders to help with your next OSHA inspection.
Training Records
It is important to have all of your training records in a single location. If each department conducts their own training programs, it makes it incredibly difficult to monitor all of the training that has been completed.
If you have a learning management system (LMS), then it is very simple to pull training records for your previous trainings. Often times, you can also provides links directly to the training materials. This will speed up the training investigation by OSHA, and streamline the process.
Training Materials
Make sure you can quickly access all of your training materials. If you happened to use a vendor for your training, then you should contact them for their materials and records. Hopefully, you also managed to fill any gaps the vendor may have missed which highlight your company policies, state procedures, and hands-on training. OSHA inspections are one of the major reasons we recommend creating custom safety training. We have yet to encounter a vendor who provides a comprehensive training program along with all of the necessary resources to company employees.
Subject Matter Experts
If the training material is a bit ambiguous, you may have to rely on your subject matter experts. It is very likely that they took part in designing and/or delivering the training. This could also be a stakeholder who selected the vendor that best fit your company. In either case, make sure you have relevant subject matter experts available to answer questions. These questions will revolve around safety topics required by your company or for an audit of your training records.
The second part of the checklist is ensuring you have all of the appropriate training topics. Often times, the safety personnel at your company is tasked with creating and assigning training plans to employees based on the hazards of their job and the tasks they perform. Here is a list of the topics typically found in workplaces. You should run this list by every task every employee performs to verify if they need necessary safety and/or skills training
- Hazardous materials
- General hazard awareness
- General office safety
- Ladder safety
- Hand and power tool safety
- Industrial hygiene
- Chemical hazards
- Chemical waste
- Lithium ion batteries
- Ergonomics
- Material handling
- General electrical safety
- Personal protective equipment (varies)
This next list are topics generally reserved for smaller groups of employees who perform specialized tasks and are exposed to unique hazards
- Laser safety
- Lockout tagout
- Arc flash training
- Forklift certification
- Chemical handling (verify state-specific requirements)
- Hazardous waste and disposal
- Fall protection
- Welding, cutting, and brazing
- Specialty tools
- Confined space entry
The lists above are not exhaustive, but rank the highest in company violations for training requirements. Make sure you review each of these topics with your safety team. This will help ensure your vendor and in-house training team are meeting the OSHA requirements. Remember that these are design to keep your employees safe, and prevent citations by government entities.
