OSHA Compliance simply means to comply with OSHA’s regulations. Failing to do so can and will result in fines, the largest ever being $81,000,000.
In order to answer this question, I need to give you some background on what OSHA is, why they were founded, and what the training actually entails.
The Founding of OSHA
Because of rising concerns with worker safety in the 1970s, Richard Nixon passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. During the debate for the necessity of this bill, one of the main representatives behind it was quoted as saying “In the last 25 years, more than 400,000 Americans were killed by work-related accidents and disease, and close to 50 million more suffered disabling injuries on the job”
This was one of the most impactful statements made regarding the need for an overseeing safety regulator, and to this day affirms the need for OSHA.
What Does OSHA Do?
OSHA’s main responsibilities are to ensure the safety of workers across America and to investigate accidents in the workplace. OSHA is actually responsible for the required exit routes and evacuation standards.
Now OSHA obviously doesn’t come out and investigate every time somebody falls in their office, but every year there are investigations. Sometimes they are random check-ups, sometimes they are because there were too many injuries in too short of a time.
The single biggest case OSHA investigated is the 2005 oil field refinery explosion that resulted in 15 deaths, 170 injuries, and a total of twenty-one million dollars in fines.
What is Compliance Training?
OSHA itself doesn’t actually issue any certificates of training or even require them. However, businesses are required to make sure their workers are properly trained on whatever safety standards they need in order to perform their duties.
OSHA does have national safety guidelines that every state is required to follow, but states can have their own revised guidelines, also. 22 states and territories in the US have their own modified rules and standards, and employees must be familiar with the standards of every state they work in.
If you need OSHA Compliance training or want to learn a little more, check out our OSHA resources and our comprehensive online compliance training portal.
Image source: Not OSHA Compliance Workplace
