Regulations  >  OSHA Safety - Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Administration

OSHA Safety - Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Administration

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Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Management Systems

Focused on protecting the workforce’s safety and health

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The Ultimate Guide to OSHA Compliance & Workplace Safety

All employers have the responsibility to protect the safety and health of their employees at the workplace. Mandated by the Occupational Safety and Health Act(OSHA) of 1970, employers with a moral responsibility benefit from greater employee loyalty and total employee involvement. They can avoid losses due to compensations and litigation such as injuries or death in the workplace, loss due to lost working hours and days, and prevent added costs from recruitment and training in case of mishaps.

OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), a division under the United States Department of Labor helps employers avoid these unwanted scenarios by being focused on protecting the workforce’s safety and health while also providing training, outreach, education, and assistance to employers. OSHA has jurisdiction over approximately 8 million employers and 130 million workers, and only has about 2,000 inspectors.


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What is an occupational safety and health management system?

Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) management systems help companies and organizations automate and digitize health and safety-related workflows. OHS includes health and safety policies, systems, standards, and records, and includes incorporating health and safety activities and programs into key business processes. OSHA makes it necessary to have an effective occupational safety and health administration management system that improves the ability to identify hazards and control risks at the workplace continuously.

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occupational safety and health administration management system main functions

What are the main functions of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration?

OSHA recommends and enforces guidelines for employers to implement and enhance the safety culture of their organizations. By aligning with OSHA, businesses can:

  • prevent injuries, illness and/or death at the workplace
  • overcome financial suffering and hardship that can affect workers, family, or even the company
  • improve workplace morale by putting genuine interest in the health and safety of your people
  • create favorable brand image among the community of customers and suppliers
  • reduce the attrition rate

How can you manage occupational health and safety administration requirements in an organization?

To ensure your organization has an ingrained culture of health and safety and follows the occupational health and safety administration requirements mandated, OSHA recommends the following practices:

  • Make safety and health a priority while communicating with employees. Explain the OSHA safety practices implemented, and proactively fix any hazards that could threaten workplace safety.

  • Lead by example by making safety an essential part of the daily conversation.

  • Implement a diligent reporting system to report any incidents (including near misses/close calls), illnesses, injuries, hazards, or safety and health concerns, anonymously, if required that can be revised for OSHA audits.

  • Conduct training programs for workers using OSHA tools to identify and control hazards.

  • Practice internal inspection using OSHA-recommended checklists to inspect the workplace internally. Also make it a point to survey the workers regarding equipment or material functioning.

  • Prepare a guidebook for hazard control by interviewing workers. Use their suggestions to improve and protect the workplace from any hazards.

  • Delegate hazard control implementation by using a collaborative OSHA health and safety management system.

  • Create contingency plans and develop instructions on foreseeable emergency scenarios. Conduct periodic drills to review the plan.

  • Consult with workers on key areas of risk, including review of new equipment or material with workers to better identify potential issues related to safety or health.

  • Identify and improvise safety and health issues in meetings or discussions.

Process Safety Management (PSM)

14 Elements of Process Safety Management (PSM) in the Oil & Gas Industry

Requirements for Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

OSHA standards include requirements for employers to do the following:

  • provide fall protection

  • prevent trenching cave-ins

  • prevent exposure to some infectious diseases

  • ensure the safety of workers who enter confined spaces

  • prevent exposure to harmful chemicals

  • put guards on dangerous machines

  • provide respirators or other safety equipment

  • provide training for certain dangerous jobs in a language and vocabulary workers can understand

  • provide fall protection

  • prevent trenching cave-ins

  • prevent exposure to some infectious diseases

  • ensure the safety of workers who enter confined spaces

  • prevent exposure to harmful chemicals

  • put guards on dangerous machines

  • provide respirators or other safety equipment

  • provide training for certain dangerous jobs in a language and vocabulary workers can understand

osha and business relationship

Relationship between OSHA and business

The OSH Act covers all private-sector employers and their employees in the 50 states and all territories and jurisdictions under federal authority. Those jurisdictions include the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Johnston Island, the Canal Zone, and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands as defined in the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

From a business perspective, following OSHA Guidelines and implementing a collaborative and scalable health and safety management system is beneficial. Automation and digital transformation are the keys to building a seamless, scalable process to ensure enterprise-wide safety. Often, an investment in a health and safety management system to meet OSHA guidelines and requirements will pay for itself in no time. OSHA helps a company adopt a proactive approach to safety requirements. Health and safety risks can turn out to be extremely expensive and businesses must take all steps necessary to meet OSHA requirements.

What are the components of an OSHA management system?

An efficient health & safety management system combines all the different elements in a workplace that need attention to provide a safe working environment for all employees. Safety management systems make health and safety an integral part of a business’s core operations. Investing in designing, developing, and implementing an effective safety management system will enable businesses to better manage reporting, responsibilities, planning, and resourcing. In order to build a robust safety management system, organizations must have six elements:

  • A health & safety plan
  • Monitoring
  • Policies, procedures, and processes
  • Supervision
  • Training and induction
  • Reporting
occupational safety and health administration management system components


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Customer Success

2 Leading US Companies use ComplianceQuest to Automate Risk Management and Maximize Occupational Safety

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Important steps in Health and Safety management solution implementation

8 Pillars for Workplace Safety Management

The prerequisites for the successful implementation of your workplace safety management system include:

occupational safety and health administration management system - important steps

  • Top management commitment
  • Creating a reporting system encouraging employee participation
  • Training workers to identify and mitigate risks
  • Performing periodic inspections and Job Hazard Analyses to reduce risks
  • Collecting data and perform analytics to prevent future occurrences
  • Prioritizing risks and putting in controls
  • Planning for emergencies and unusual occurrences
  • Constantly improving based on experience

The PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle is essential for a smooth implementation and continuous improvement of your systems to keep pace with the changing market and regulatory requirements.

Step 1: Plan

Once the team is aware of the safety policy, employee roles, and responsibilities, the first step in OSHA compliance will be planning. While building an SMS for the workplace, it is necessary to plan the execution methodology of the system that allows the HR and safety teams to work collaboratively. Broadly, the following points should be considered:

  • OHSMS issues in the order of priority including hazards, risks, areas for improvement, safety deficiencies
  • Objectives of the safety and health management system based on the issues identified
  • An implementation plan that includes a list of process items from safety checklist, daily data entry, document management, risk management, CAPA, inspection management
Step 2: Do

Next step in OSHA safety is implementation. It is essential to have a safety checklist that will cover all aspects of the compliance requirements. The four broad components of the implementation process include:

  • Operational elements such as risk assessment, emergency responses, process verification among others
  • Training
  • Communication
  • Documentation
Step 3: Check

Having a proactive approach is the key to OSHA compliance. According to OSHA, safety and health compliance is a continuous process. Constant monitoring is important to ensure that the system is working as per the plan and relevant to the evolving OSHA regulatory standards and organizational requirements.

Step 4: Act

Continuous evaluation is the cornerstone of a successful safety program mandated by OSHA. Employers must constantly evaluate the safety program for early indicators to predict mishaps on the shop floor or any other location. With a strong communication system, businesses can leverage these data points to train and educate employees on safety standards. Over time, these parameters can be used as a checklist to improve the safety and health standards of the organization.

Outstanding execution and solution coverage

We implemented this software where I work and have been overall happy with the outcome. After taking a day or two workings to learn the software, you’ll never want to go back to your old ways! There’s also a huge library of training videos provided with the subscription, and an easy to use ticket portal. Moving to CQ HSE was worth the effort and will pay for itself within the year, but what really matters is that we have a fully functional HSE software that can grow and evolve with the business. The mobile features and real-time data capture provides great accessibility to the HSE program for all levels of staff.

Andre Perrault,
Manager, Health Safety & Environment
Altex Energy

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ComplianceQuest’s health and safety management solution with OSHA compliance

Health and safety are gaining heightened significance in the current circumstances. With organizations having offices across geographies, the ComplianceQuest EHS solution enables seamless management of your organization’s complete health and safety management program through a range of intuitively integrated tools and applications. ComplianceQuest’s Environment, Health, and Safety management system is built ground up on the Salesforce platform. This ensures that the EHS is flexible, scalable, and integrates seamlessly with other ERP, CRM, and EQMS platforms. Specifically, it helps build robust processes for the following:

  • Design: Build exhaustive processes, workflows, and checklists to manage workplace safety interventions.

  • Monitor: Track workplace safety data in real-time, with data visibility across the organization.

  • Act: Take action based on predictive analytics and a proactive mindset.

  • Improve: Take corrective or preventive action as needed in a timely manner.


occupational health and safety administration requirments

The ComplianceQuest’s safety management solution offers a range of intuitive and comprehensive tools and applications to complete any organization’s safety and health program, including:

  • Safety Event Reporting: This provides workers with easy access to report injuries, accidents or near misses to manage the risk, ensure an effective response, and if required, report directly to the regulatory agency.
  • CAPA: End-to-end management of incidents, right from investigation to change management.
  • Worksite Inspections: Define the schedule, checklists, and assess the type and level of safe activity for all or specific locations.
  • Safety Observations: Encourage employee participation to improve the Safety Culture. The data can be leveraged for trending or assigning investigations and actions depending on what is required.
  • Compliance Management: This CQ module is managed by Enhesa – the world’s largest provider of EHS regulatory requirements. Our solution offers the capability of undertaking a regulatory applicability analysis for a particular geography/operation.
  • Stakeholder Management: Manage and satisfy all your stakeholders ensuring their participation and involvement in identifying H&S risks and do a root cause analysis.
  • Risk management: The risk management module lets you:
    • Maintain all hazards and risks in a consolidated document
    • Categorize risks based on a thought-through risk rating methodology
    • Classify risks based on the function/process/activity
    • Follow the hierarchy of controls while determining control measures
    • Assign risk owners and frequency of review
    • Alter the risk level based on the effectiveness of the control measure
  • Toolbox Talks: Create and record the information for your Toolbox Talks that employees can access from their mobile.
  • Stop Work Authority: Record a stop-work order and manage the risk of returning to operations especially after a lockdown.
  • Safety Notifications and Collaboration: Improve Health and Safety communication and transparency and track changes.
  • Analytics And Dashboards: For measuring the Health and Safety metrics of your workplace and improving decision-making and oversight.
  • Mobile Access: Access reports, approvals, record views, reviews, alerts, etc., on the go, anywhere, anytime, and on any device. Complete access to the solution, including ensuring business continuity and improves efficiency, visibility, and flexibility.

CQ also has one more app that is OSHA compliant. The Workplace Environment, Health, and Safety solution from ComplianceQuest has been designed with OSHA as the guiding principle, making compliance automatic and intuitive. The EHS solution is modular and, therefore, can be implemented cost-effectively and quickly based on your risks and priorities.

ComplianceQuest has also launched the Workplace Safety app for Work.com on the Salesforce.com platform. This app upholds OSHA’s safety standards by offering a data-driven, collaborative platform to manage the workflows for employee health and workplace safety. Organizations can use the Workplace Safety app to create a robust SMS for the employees.

Comply with OSHA Act of 1970 to proactively prevent injuries and provide a safe and healthy workplace

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Frequently Asked Questions

  • With the growing importance of workflow safety, ComplianceQuest’s EHS solution offers a range of modules to automate health and safety management processes.

    Some of the prominent features of ComplianceQuest’s Health and Safety Solutions include safety event reporting, CAPA, worksite inspection, compliance management, stop work authority, analytics, among others. Over the years, ComplianceQuest’s H&S offerings have reduced the incidence and costs of workplace injuries, realize ROI by avoiding recurrence, and better understand the risks and precautions.

  • To make workplace safety compliance efficient, ComplianceQuest launched a Workplace Safety app as part of Salesforce’s Work.com initiative. This app will play a crucial role in upholding OSHA’s safety standards by offering a data-driven, collaborative platform to manage the workflows for employee health and workplace safety. To get the most out of the Workplace Safety App, we recommend a four-point rule: design, monitor, act, and improve.

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