Workplace Safety Records Become Publicly Accessible

OSHA is stepping up its efforts to become a lot more transparent with the safety records of American workplaces.

The workplace safety watchdog will be publishing companies’ annual reported safety data on a website accessible to the public. This means that anybody can look up a company and see their workplace safety record. (Data that identifies individuals will not be public.) The goal of making this data easily accessible is ultimately to identify problems and make workplaces safer.

But the implications are more widespread than simply improved safety. Companies and other organizations will be interested in this information for a variety of reasons: 

• Competitors may want to exploit a company’s poor workplace safety record.
• Potential employees can easily determine how safe a company is as they consider a job offer or use safety records as a way to determine which company to go work for.
• Insurance companies can use the data to calculate premiums based on a company’s safety record.
• Investors may use this recordable data as they make calculations about which companies to invest in.
• Employees can weigh their current company’s safety data as they consider whether or not to stay there.
• Labor unions may use safety data in their negotiations if OSHA’s public reporting indicates that a company is not protecting its workers.

The increasingly public availability of safety records is just one more reason for companies to ensure that their reporting is timely, accurate and complete. At the same time, companies need to be careful about over-reporting. Knowing what incidents are reportable or not will become increasingly important to ensure that the safety record that OSHA is making publicly available is accurate and not unnecessarily adverse.  

To dig further into what is OSHA reportable and what isn’t, check out my blog on the subject or download our OSHA decision tree.