Special Topics in Safety Management

Q&A: More A’s to Your S&H Q’s

Yesterday, we presented a sample of questions received by BLR safety experts and the answers they provided. Today, we conclude our Q&A with these offerings.

Q. Is testing after employee training really necessary?

A. Testing employees’ understanding of safety benefits everybody. Tests help you assess the effectiveness of your employee safety training. They help you:

  • Measure employee understanding and retention of safe practices
  • Gauge the competence of each trainee
  • Document compliance with training regulations
  • Indicate where more training is needed
  • Identify weaknesses in your safety training program

Employee safety tests provide documentation that required training has taken place and that employees have achieved required training objectives. Such tests also indicate when additional employee training is necessary.

Q. How long must OSHA logs be kept?

A. Employers must save the OSHA 300 Log, the privacy case list (if one exists), the annual summary, and the OSHA 301 Incident Report forms for 5 years following the end of the calendar year that the records cover. During the storage period, you must update the stored OSHA 300 Logs to include newly discovered recordable injuries or illnesses and to show any changes that have occurred in the classification of previously recorded injuries and illnesses. If the description or outcome of a case changes, the employer must remove or line out the original entry and enter the new information.


Great news! BLR’s renowned Safety.BLR.com® website now has even more timesaving features. Take our no-cost site tour! Or better yet, try it at no cost or obligation for a full 2 weeks.


Q. I have an employee who has an allergy to one of the chemicals we use. This employee was put on a permanent restriction. I believe this is recordable on the OSHA log… I can’t figure out how many days to put down for job transfer or restriction. The employee did not miss any days.

A. Please see the following excerpt from the recordkeeping regulations:

1904.7(b)(4)(xi)
How do I count days of job transfer or restriction? You count days of job transfer or restriction in the same way you count days away from work, using § 1904.7(b)(3)(i) to (viii), above. The only difference is that, if you permanently assign the injured or ill employee to a job that has been modified or permanently changed in a manner that eliminates the routine functions the employee was restricted from performing, you may stop the day count when the modification or change is made permanent. You must count at least one day of restricted work or job transfer for such cases.

Q. Does OSHA require hazard assessments to be performed annually? If not, what are the frequency requirements?

A. There is no general OSHA requirement to conduct annual hazard assessments, nor is there a specified frequency. OSHA’s PPE standard does, however, require written certification of a site hazard assessment that must be performed at all work sites to determine if PPE is needed.


Your one-stop safety management resource, available 24/7. Go here to take a no-cost site tour or here to try it in your own office!


Be Well Informed

Whatever is important in workplace safety and health, wherever and whenever it’s happening, you’ll find out about it right away at Safety.BLR.com. You’ll be able to stay on top of all the latest developments 24/7, at your convenience and at a very reasonable cost.

Whether you need answers to your questions, help interpreting OSHA regulations, alerts about new enforcement initiatives, news about safety innovations, or information about some other vital safety and health issue, you’ll find it all at Safety.BLR.com, conciselyreported and clearly explained by our safety experts.

What’s more, this one-stop safety website is a fantastic resource for safety training materials on just about any topic you can imagine.

Training responsibilities become a snap with the website’s thousands of audio presentations, PowerPoints, prewritten safety meetings, toolbox talks, trainer’s guides, and much, much more. You’ll find training tools on more than 120 safety topics along with plain-English compliance analysis and other resources.

At a time when budget considerations are paramount, what makes more sense than an all-in-one safety training and compliance solution?

And BLR has revamped Safety.BLR.com to meet your needs even better. You’ll be amazed by all the features and functionality of the site. Highlights include:

  • Side-by-Side State/Federal Compliance. By placing our state and federal regulatory analysis side by side, you easily see how to fully comply with both governmental entities.
  • MSDS Library Expansion. The site now provides an immense library of 3.5 million MSDS and SDS forms, with about 10,000 more added or changed every week. Need one? Just call up the chemical by name, manufacturer, product group, or CAS number, then print it out.
  • Newsletter Wizard. If you’ve ever wanted to publish a safety newsletter but felt lacking in editorial skills, this new addition is for you.
  • Plan Builder. Select from our library of safety plans, customize them to suit your company’s needs, and assemble them into collections you can save in our personal library.

We’re pretty excited about Safety.BLR.com and all of its enhancements, and we’re eager for you to experience it, too. That’s why we’ve created a complimentary site tour, available here. It takes just 5 minutes.

If you like what you see, you’re invited to try the site at no cost and with no obligation. We’ll even give you a complimentary special report for doing so. Go here to take a 5-minute tour of Safety.BLR.com. It may be just what you’re looking for.

Print

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.