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5 reasons to act now on OSHA’s new electronic-submission proposal

electronic_submission_of_OSHA_injury_and_illness_dataIf you’re a risk and/or safety manager, you’re probably interested in OSHA’s proposal from Nov. 7 to amend its recordkeeping regulations by adding requirements for the electronic submission of establishment-specific injury and illness data. Employers subject to OSHA regulations are already required to keep this information, yet according to OSHA, the agency has timely, systematic access to establishment-specific injury and illness data from only a small percentage of the 7.5 million establishments in the U.S.  

What would these new electronic submission requirements mean for businesses and other organizations subject to OSHA regulations? 

In a statement, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Dr. David Michaels said, “The proposal does not add any new requirement to keep records; it only modifies an employer's obligation to transmit these records to OSHA.” Yet the additional volume of data that organizations would need to report could well make for a substantial increase in workload. Consider that: 

  • For many, if not most, U.S. businesses, the new regulations would mean that the most common ways of collecting and aggregating location-based OSHA injury and illness data would be rendered inadequate. Most organizations still collect and then report to a centralized safety office OSHA injury and illness data on an individual-location basis, using spreadsheets that may or may not use standardized terminology and field designations. 
  • In the absence of automated recordkeeping and reporting at the location level, risk and safety managers would have to compile data collected in spreadsheets and submit it to OSHA on a quarterly basis.  

Automated collection of and reporting on OSHA recordables made a great deal of sense even before the agency announced its new proposal. Even if the proposal never takes effect, however, there are still at least five compelling reasons for organizations to streamline and modernize the management and reporting of their OSHA records. 

  1. Eliminate manual spreadsheet compilation: Rather than manually compile spreadsheet-based injury and illness data from each and every location, an automated claims admin system can manage OSHA as well as any kind(s) of claim in a single system. 
  2. Get consistent data: With manual processes, it’s often challenging, if not downright impossible, for the OSHA data at the field level to match up with the results at the headquarters level. With better data, organizations can set specific requirements and alerts to help with OSHA compliance and performance targets. 
  3. Enhance reporting capabilities: Automated claims admin software can generate all OSHA reports, build custom reports, generate on-demand reports, email reports, and make reports available on dashboards. 
  4. Get a better picture of location-specific safety performance: With an automated system, you can incorporate incident reporting, incident rates and DART rates into a more comprehensive safety picture at the location level.
  5. Improve location-level accountability for all incidents: You can use reporting dashboards in a risk management information system to push out to all users each and every incident that appears on the location’s OSHA 300 logs. All incidents are linked to the location, which means that corporate claims and safety teams can monitor the same incidents and incident rates that location-level users are seeing.

To learn more about this, I suggest you read a blog post from April on 3 Ways to Transform the OSHA Reporting and Recordkeeping Process. And if you have any questions or comments, we at Aon eSolutions are always happy to speak with you.

chad-levineChad Levine is business development manager with Aon eSolutions, based in Chicago. Contact Chad by email at chad.levine@aon.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

RMIS Guide

Nov 14, 2013

 | Originally posted on 

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