The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently unveiled its top 10 most frequently cited violations. The agency reports the leading causes of workplace injuries during its fiscal year (October through the following September).
The 2017 top 10 list of most frequently cited standards did not change significantly from 2016, with fall protection violations remaining at the top of the list. In fact, the top five most cited violations remained the same.
- Fall Protection (29 CFR 1926.501): 6,072 citations
Falls from ladders and roofs still account for the majority of injuries at work. Identifying fall hazards and deciding how to best protect workers is the first step in eliminating or reducing fall hazards. This includes, but is not limited to, guardrail systems, safety net systems and personal fall protection systems in conjunction with safe work practices and training.
- Hazard Communication (29 CFR 1910.1200): 4,176 citations
In order to ensure chemical safety in the workplace, information must be available about the identities and hazards of all chemicals in use. OSHA standard 1910.1200 governs hazard communication to workers about chemicals that are both produced or imported into the workplace. Both the failure to develop and maintain a proper written training program for employees, as well as the failure to provide a Safety Data Sheet for every hazardous chemical, top the citation list.
- Scaffolding (29 CFR 1926.451): 3,288 citations
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the vast majority of scaffold accidents can be attributed to the planking or support of the scaffold giving way, or to employees slipping or being struck by falling objects. The dangers associated with scaffold use can be controlled if employers strictly enforce OSHA standards.
- Respiratory Protection (29 CFR 1910.134): 3,097 citations
Standard 1910.134 provides employers with guidance in establishing and maintaining a respiratory inspection program for program administration, worksite-specific procedures and respirator use. Respirators protect workers from oxygen-deficient environments, harmful dusts, fogs, smokes, mists, gases, vapors and sprays. These hazards could cause cancer, lung impairment, and other diseases or death.
- Lockout/Tagout (29 CFR 1910.147): 2,877 citations
Lockout/tagout (LOTO) refers to specific practices and procedures that safeguard employees from the unexpected startup of machinery and equipment, or the release of hazardous energy during service and maintenance activities. Workers who service mechanical and electrical equipment face the greatest risk of injury if LOTO is not properly implemented. Workers injured on the job from exposure to hazardous energy lose an average of 24 workdays for recuperation.
- Ladders (29 CFR 1926.1053): 2,241 citations
These types of violations typically occur when ladders are used for purposes other than those designated by the manufacturer, such as when the top step of a stepladder is used as a step, when ladders are not used on stable and level surfaces, or when defective ladders are not withdrawn from service. Most employee injuries can be attributed to inadequate training and a disregard for safe operating procedures.
- Powered Industrial Trucks (29 CFR 1910.178): 2,162 citations
Each year, tens of thousands of injuries related to powered industrial trucks (particularly forklifts) occur. Many employees are injured when lift trucks are driven off of loading docks or when they fall between docks and unsecured trailers. Other common injuries involve employees being struck by lift trucks or falling from elevated pallets and tines. Most incidents also involve property damage, including damage to overhead sprinklers, racking, pipes, walls and machinery.
- Machine Guarding (29 CFR 1910.212): 1,933 citations
When left exposed, moving machine parts have the potential to cause serious workplace injuries, such as amputations, burns, blindness, and crushed fingers or hands. The risk of employee injury is substantially reduced by installing and maintaining the proper machine guarding.
- Fall Protection Training Requirements (29 CFR 1926.503): 1,523 citations
Because falls represent such a serious risk, employers must train employees to identify potential fall hazards and follow procedures in order to minimize the chance of a fall. According to OSHA, employees should be trained to use fall protection methods, such as guardrails, safety nets and personal fall arrest systems, and employers should verify that employees have been trained by preparing written certification records.
- Electrical—Wiring Methods (29 CFR 1910.305): 1,405 citations
Electricity has long been recognized as a serious workplace hazard. OSHA’s electrical standards are designed to protect employees exposed to dangers, such as electric shock, electrocution, fires and explosions. Electrical wiring violations that top the electrical citation list include the failure to install and use electrical equipment according to the manufacturer’s instructions, failure to guard electrical equipment, failure to identify disconnecting means or circuits, and not keeping workspaces clear.
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It costs nearly 20 percent of an employee’s annual salary to replace a current employee. If you are experiencing high turnover, chances are you are experiencing high losses as well. The costs of reviewing applications, processing candidates, conducting interviews, training and purchasing equipment for new hires aren’t only monetary – they also cost time and lost productivity.
Given the high cost of losing an employee, retention should be a top priority for every organization. If you do not already have a retention strategy, now is the time to make one. The first step in curbing turnover is figuring out why employees are leaving.
Why Employees Leave
Employees leave organizations for a variety of reasons, depending on their unique circumstances. However, there are some common reasons that may help determine the best retention strategy for your organization. Below are some of the most common reasons employees leave:
- Stagnation – Employees are often looking for career and personal growth. If they have no upward mobility at your company, they may look for it elsewhere.
- Pay – Compensation needs to be competitive to attract the best talent. Likewise, good pay is needed to retain top talent.
- Workplace culture – Expectedly, co-workers matter to employees. If they feel ostracized or marginalized by co-workers (or management), they will want to leave that environment.
- Better opportunities – Like with stagnation, employees leave when they believe they have better prospects elsewhere. This could be due to a higher-paying position or simply a job more aligned with their interests.
How to Retain Employees
Retention strategies are not universal. It is possible that techniques and strategies that work for some organizations will not work for yours. This means you need to analyze why your employees are leaving and strategize how to combat those reasons.
Exit interviews are a great way to analyze why employees are leaving. During exit interviews, managers ask questions to employees who are on their way out of the company. Questions should be related to the employees’ time with the company, such as what they enjoyed, what they disliked and what prompted their resignation. Exit interviews will only be useful with employees who resign or leave voluntarily, not those who have been terminated.
Depending on the responses from the exit interviews, you can begin crafting a retention strategy. For instance, if a main catalyst for employee turnover is a lack of upward mobility, think about how to change that. It could mean creating new roles or, if roles already exist, making a clear guide for career pathing at the organization.
Creating a retention strategy does not need to be solely reactive. Consider creating a survey to gauge employee satisfaction with the company. Include questions about what people like and what they do not like about their job.
Retaining employees is critical for any business an falling short on retention can be devesating to your bottom line. It costs nearly 20 percent of an annual salary to replace an employee, so implementing proactive retention straties is key to mainitning your workforce.
Answer the questions below to determine if your orginzation has a high turnover risk.
| INSTRUCTIONS: Begin by answering the questions below. Each response will be given a numerical value depending on the answer. After completeing the questions, total your score using the scale at the bottom of the page. |
| YES: 0 points |
NO: 2 points |
UNSURE: 2 points |
|
| QUESTION |
ANSWER |
SCORE |
| Have you reviewed pay scales within the last three years? |
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| Do you survey employees career groth desires each year? |
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| Have you compared your health insurance against similar companies in your industry? |
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| Do you routinely survey employees to ensure they feel comfortable and included in the workplace environment? |
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| Do you track top employee performers? |
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| Do you monitor the market to ensure top performers are appropriately compensated? |
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| Have you surveyed employees in the past to guage their workplace satisfaction? |
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| Do you have a retention strategy in place for when a top performer comes to you with another offer? |
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| Do you offer incentives beyone health benefits to employees? |
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| Have you implemented employee engagement strategies to curb turnover proactively? |
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| TOTAL SCORE: |
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| Low Risk |
Moderate Risk |
High Risk |
| 0 – 6 |
7 – 13 |
14 – 20 |
|
There is no hard and fast rule for successful employee retention. Creating a retention strategy for your organization requires you to analyze both your company and its industry. Contact Scurich Insurance for more information on retention and for materials to help you craft your strategy.
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Technology can be a risk, especially when it involves your password. You hear about all of the hack attempts on the large corporations, but you don’t hear about the every day person that get’s targeted by a cyber attack. Simply visiting a website could enable your attacker access to your computer. This should push you to protect your most valuable asset, your password! Don’t give the hackers an easy target by not following the simple tips on improving your password.
Improve Your Password
- Change your password every 30-45 days.
- Choose a password between 8-16 characters.
- Use at least two special characters (!@#$%^&*) randomly within your password
- Avoid using family or pet names, dates or common phrases within your password.
- Never reuse or repeat a password across accounts.
Stay Away from COMMON Passwords
Protect yourself (and your company) by making sure you’re not using one of the top 25 most commonly stolen passwords of 2017, as determined by IT security firm SplashData.
- 123456
- password
- 12345678
- qwerty
- 12345
- 123456789
- letmein
- 1234567
- football
- iloveyou
- admin
- welcome
- monkey
- login
- abc123
- starwars
- 123123
- dragon
- passw0rd
- master
- hello
- freedom
- whatever
- qazwsk
- trustno1
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It’s that time of year: Feb. 1 marks the deadline for you to tabulate your annual OSHA Log Summary (OSHA Form 300A) and post it in a common area wherever notices to employees are usually posted.
The summary must list the total number of job-related injuries and illnesses that occurred during the previous calendar year and were logged on the OSHA 300 Form. And don’t forget to leave the Summary posted until April 30.
If you need additional assistance, have questions about recordability, or would like to compare your loss performance trends against national benchmarking data, contact us today at 831-661-5697 for more information.
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Business leaders make decidions each day on a range of issues including things like hiring, firing, compensation, promotions and the work environment. Every one of these decisions impacts your employees and, depending on the outcome, could result in a claim related to wrongful employment practices.
These claims can disrupt business, hurt morale, damage your reputation and lead to serious financial damages. Thankfully, employment practicies liability (EPL) insurance can provide organizations with protection from the above risks. Specifically, EPL insurance provides the following to policyholders.
Coverage for alleged acts.
EPL insurance not only protects organization from actual wrongful acts, but alleged acts as well. Specifically, EPL coverage can safeguard an organization from claims related to discrimination, harassment, retaliation and wrongful termination.
Timely responses to lawsuits.
Employees suing their employers is common, and orginzations will want to be prepared. This is especially important when you consider that there is no cap on how much a jury can award and that settlements in employment-related cases can easily reach six-figures.
Access to legal help.
Strong EPL policies provide the insured with access to legal resouces. This can prove invaluable if you need advice quickly.
Risk management strategies.
While employment-related lawsuits can arise at any time, organizations that take the time to implement basic risk controls are better equipped to avoid claims altogether. Many insurance companies provide access to risk management training and human resources consulting. These services can greatly reduce the likelihood that your company is sued by an employee.
Additional protection for your directors and officers.
While directors and officers (D&O) insurance can defend against employment-related lawsuits, dedicated EPL insurance is necessary for many orginzations.Having a policy that provides separate coverage for lawsuits connected to wrongful terminations, discrimination, invasion of privacy and similar employent claims ensures that the limits on your D&O policy aren’t exhuasted unnecessarily.
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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) electronic reporting rule requires certain establishments to report information electronically from their OSHA Forms 300, 300A and 301. Under the rule, the first electronic reports were due on July 1, 2017.
However, on Nov. 24, 2017, OSHA issued a new final rule officially delaying the first electronic reporting deadline to Dec. 15, 2017. Affected establishments will need to submit their reports through the Injury Tracking Application (ITA) website by that time or face possible OSHA penalties.
ACTION STEPS
- Affected establishments must create an account on the ITA website and submit information from their 2016 OSHA 300A form by Dec. 15, 2017.
- Other deadlines under the electronic reporting rule remain unaltered. Therefore, affected establishments should begin their preparations to submit information from all 2017 OSHA forms by July 1, 2018.
Affected Establishments
OSHA’s electronic reporting rule affects establishments that:
- Are already required to create and maintain OSHA injury and illness records and have 250 or more employees;
- Have between 20 and 249 employees and belong to a high-risk industry; and
- Receive a specific request from OSHA to create, maintain and submit electronic records, even if they would otherwise be exempt from OSHA recordkeeping requirements.
The electronic reporting rule applies to establishments, not employers. An employer may have several worksites or establishments. In these situations, some establishments may be affected while others are not.
To determine whether an establishment is affected, employers must determine each establishment’s peak employment during the calendar year. During this determination, employers must count every individual that worked at that establishment, regardless of whether he or she worked full-time, part-time, or was a temporary or seasonal worker.
Finally, a firm with more than one establishment may submit establishment-specific data for multiple establishments.
Reporting Requirements
| Submission Deadline |
Number of Employees
(per establishment) |
| 250+ |
20 -249 |
| Dec. 15, 2017 |
Form 300A |
Form 300A |
| July 1, 2018 |
Forms 300A, 300 and 301 |
Form 300A |
| March 2 (2019 and beyond) |
Forms 300A, 300 and 301 |
Form 300A |
The data an employer must submit and the timeline for submitting this information to OSHA depends on the establishment size.
Establishments with 250 or more employees will be required to submit information from their OSHA Forms 300A, 300 and 301. However, in 2017, these establishments will only be required to submit data from their 300A Form. Establishments in high-risk industries with between 20 and 249 employees will be required to submit information only from their OSHA Form 300A.
For the first reporting year, the deadline has been delayed to Dec. 15, 2017. However, the final rule that delayed the first deadline did not alter subsequent deadlines, so reporting deadlines for 2018, 2019 and beyond remain as shown in the table above.
Submitting the Report
The ITA is a secure website that OSHA created specifically for the data required by the electronic reporting rule. The ITA allows employers three options to submit their reports:
- Manual entry;
- Comma-separated value (CSV) file upload; and
- Application programming interface (API) transmission.
The ITA offers affected establishment instructions and sample files and templates to help them complete the submission process.
OSHA-approved State Plans
The final rule required OSHA-approved State Plans to adopt the electronic rule or “substantially identical” requirements within six months of the final rule’s publication date. The final rule was published on May 12, 2016.
This means that OSHA-approved State Plans have the authority to adopt reporting requirements that go above and beyond what is required by the federal rule. For this reason, establishments located in OSHA-approved State Plan jurisdictions should consult with their local OSHA offices to make sure they are satisfying all electronic reporting requirements.
However, the following OSHA-approved State Plans have not yet adopted the requirement to submit injury and illness reports electronically:
 |
| All Employers |
Public Employers |
- California
- Maryland
- Minnesota
- South Carolina
- Utah
- Washington
- Wyoming
|
- Illinois
- Maine
- New Jersey
- New York
|
Similarly, state and local government establishments in IL, ME, NJ and NY are not currently required to submit their data through the reporting website.
More Information
Contact Scurich Insurance or visit the OSHA tracking of workplace injuries and illnesses webpage for more information regarding electronic reporting.
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