At Safety 2016, the annual conference of the American Society of Safety Engineers, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health David Michaels gave an update on his agency’s priorities and his reflections on his time with OSHA to a crowded room of safety professionals.
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Much of Michaels’s presentation focused on the agency’s efforts to engage more employers in safety efforts through a variety of channels. One such channel he identified is the agency’s recent shift to conducting Rapid Response Investigations (RRIs) in response to certain reports of severe employee injuries.
In these cases, instead of sending an inspector out to investigate every incident, OSHA instead reaches out to the employer and directs it to conduct a root cause analysis for the incident, then implement and document corrective measures to prevent future incidents. Michaels called the RRI initiative a “collaborative, problem-solving approach” that invites an employer and an OSHA area office to work together towards a common goal of protecting workers.