3 Ways Mobile Forms Protect Businesses from New OSHA Implications
Part 1 of 4
By: Shannon Corgan, Director of Marketing
Do you have more than one location for your business? Does your business operate in multiple areas? If so, you need to know about a recent groundbreaking ruling that could dramatically increase the risk you are exposing your company to, if you continue business as usual. Find out how mobile forms protect businesses from new OSHA fines.
Central Transport, based in Warren, Michigan, is a privately held trucking company. They focus on the long-haul market servicing the major regional markets in the US. They have nearly 200 customer service centers throughout the US. At their Billerica, Massachusetts shipping terminal, they were recently fined $330,800 for 14 workplace safety and health standards violations. Although the fine is large, what we should be paying attention to is the reason for the fine. Read the following excerpt from a recent Department of Labor OSHA press release.
“Judge Baumerich’s order is significant and precedent-setting. This is the first decision by an OSHA Administrative Law Judge expressly finding that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission may have the authority under the OSH Act to order abatement measures beyond the specific violations identified in the citations. The department is now authorized to proceed with discovery and to demonstrate, by presenting its evidence at trial, that enterprise-wide abatement is merited on the facts of this case,” said Michael Felsen, the regional solicitor of labor for New England.1
Here’s OSHA’s take on what this ruling means for businesses that operate in more than one location:
“When an employer has hazards occurring at multiple locations, common sense and reasonable worker protection law enforcement both dictate that the employer take corrective action to safeguard the health and well-being of employees at all its worksites,” said Kim Stille, OSHA’s regional administrator for New England.
What does this mean for businesses that operate in more than one location? Based on their interpretation it now means that OSHA can cite a facility or location that they haven’t even visited. They are expecting you to protect the safety of your employees at all your locations, at all of your worksites, based on them finding violations at an individual location. You may be asking yourself, what can you do to improve your safety compliance and minimize your risk? Mobile forms protect businesses like yours three ways. First, you have to make sure you share and communicate safety issues across your entire organization. You can instantly notify the right people as soon as a safety or injury form is completed. Mobile forms protect businesses like yours and give you the visibility to all of your safety risks across your entire organization in real time. Secondly, with a centralized database for your mobile forms, you can easily track and analyze your employee injuries to identify trends. You can be proactive with your safety compliance instead of reactive. Thirdly, Training is the #1 thing you need to do to protect your employees and mitigate any risk for your company. With intelligent mobile forms for safety and injury reporting, you can ask additional clarifying questions or provide a training video to watch to help them complete the safety forms correctly.
Mobile Forms can help support the new OSHA implications for multi-location businesses. Check out our next 3 blogs that will go into more details about how you can use mobile forms to support your safety compliance. Click here to read Part 2 of our Mobile Forms for OSHA Blog Series.
Sources:
1 United States Department of Labor – Occupational Health and Safety Press Release 12/7/2015 https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=NEWS_RELEASES&p_id=29334
http://info.workmax.com/acton/formfd/14741/0024:d-0002