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  Regulations  >  OSHA Safety Standards & Regulations

OSHA Safety Standards & Regulations

OSHA Safety Standards

The Ultimate Guide to OSHA Safety Standards for the Workplace

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OSHA Safety Standards
OSHA safety standards video

Introduction to OSHA Safety Standards Guidelines

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Safety Standards Guidelines establish and enforce OSHA safety standards for workers across various industries. The guidelines cover various workplace safety aspects, from hazardous material handling to machine guarding, electrical safety, and personal protective equipment.

OSHA regulations mandate employers to maintain a safe and healthy work environment, conduct training and education programs, and provide employees with the necessary tools and knowledge to prevent accidents and occupational health issues. Compliance with OSHA Safety standards is crucial for ensuring workplace safety and mitigating risks.


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The OSHA Workplace Safety Process

OSHA upholds the OSHA workplace safety of the workforce through the following methods:

  • Inspections
  • Severe Violator Enforcement Program
  • Whistleblower Program

OSHA inspectors, called compliance, safety, and health officers, conduct on-site inspections and phone/fax investigations to ensure companies comply with OSHA safety standards requirements and OSHA workplace safety. Inspections are scheduled based on the following:

  • Imminent danger
  • Catastrophes – fatalities or hospitalizations
  • Worker complaints and referrals
  • Targeted inspections: particular hazards, high injury rates
  • Follow-up inspections

In addition to site inspections, the Severe Violator Enforcement Program and OSHA’s Whistleblower Protection Program require employers who repeatedly endanger employees’ health to implement safety practices. The identity of employees who file complaints against such employers is protected.

Another critical component of OSHA is reporting. Employers in highly hazardous industries are mandated to keep records of serious work-related injuries and illnesses. OSHA’s record-keeping regulations are based on the framework of the national occupational safety and health record-keeping system. OSHA workplace safety adheres to a structured reporting requirement that catalogs all incidents in the organization. The primary reporting requirements for OSHA workplace safety include notifying OSHA about:

  • The death of any worker from a work-related incident within 8 hours of learning about it
  • Catastrophes: fatalities or hospitalizations
  • Any work-related inpatient hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye within 24 hours

OSHA process
Workplace and Employee Safety

Design, Automate and Monitor a Continuous Process around Workplace and Employee Safety Effectively

How to Effectively Implement OSHA Guidelines in Your Organization to Meet OSHA Safety Standards

To implement the guidelines and comply with OSHA safety standards for improved worker safety and health, OSHA recommends the following practices:

  • Prioritize safety and health:

    Communicate with their employees about the safety practices they have implemented, as well as fix any hazards that could threaten workplace safety.

  • Lead by example:

    Always make safety an essential part of the daily conversation and take initiative to practice safe behaviors.

  • Implement a diligent reporting system:

    Create an effective procedure for workers to report any injuries, illnesses, incidents (including near misses/close calls), hazards, or safety and health concerns, anonymously, if required.

  • Training program:

    Conduct training programs for workers to identify and control hazards using OSHA tools, such as OSHA’s Hazard Identification Training Tool.

  • Practice internal inspection:

    Use OSHA safety standards recommended checklists to internally inspect the workplace and survey the workers regarding equipment or material functioning.

  • Prepare a guidebook for hazard control:

    Interview workers for suggestions and ideas to improve the workplace and protect the floor from any hazards.

  • Delegate hazard control implementation:

    Make the process more effective by assigning hazard control solutions to workers. Assign workers duties related to choosing to implement and evaluating the solutions.

  • Create contingency plans:

    Develop instructions on foreseeable emergency scenarios and conduct drills to review the plan.

  • Consult with workers:

    Review new equipment or material with workers to identify potential issues related to safety or health.

  • Identify and improvise:

    Include safety and health issues in the meeting agenda.

Educating Employees with OSHA Training Programs

OSHA incident inspection often includes a critical question “Did the employee receive enough training to do the job?”

Training is an integral part of the OSHA Safety Standards guidelines. OSHA firmly believes that training, outreach, and education are essential to prevent work-related illnesses, injuries, and deaths. Employers must look at training as an investment that prioritizes workers’ health while benefiting the organization in the long run with fewer injuries, improved employee morale, and lower insurance premiums.

Some of the training programs and educational materials recommended by OSHA include:

injury and illness prevention

Injury and Illness Prevention Programs

educational information

Educational Information

OSHA training institute

OSHA Training Institute (OTI) Education Centers

worker participation in developing training programs

Worker Participation in Developing Training Programs

  • injury and illness prevention

    Injury and Illness Prevention Programs

  • educational information

    Educational Information

  • OSHA training institute

    OSHA Training Institute (OTI) Education Centers

  • worker participation in developing training programs

    Worker Participation in Developing Training Programs



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Understanding the 14 Elements of Process Safety Management (PSM)

understanding the 14 elements of PSM webinar
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A Simplified Guide to Automating Health and Safety Management to Adhere to OSHA Safety Standards

Safety processes can be manually tracked, but as the complexity increases and the organization grows, it can become challenging to keep it meaningful and comprehensive.

A next-generation Health and Safety Management Solution enables you to centralize all incident data, near misses, safety observations, perform investigations, and implement corrective actions to comply with OSHA safety standards. Furthermore, with built-in analytics and dashboards, detecting a hazardous trend is now possible, which then leads to preventing accidents. A truly world-class safety management system will make it really easy for a safety leader to meet OSHA requirements and guidelines.

OSHA safety standards with EHS

With an EHS like ComplianceQuest, a business user can create OSHA 300, 300A, and 301 incident forms electronically with a couple of clicks, not hours of time spent digging for data. Overall, a well-implemented, robust EHS helps meet OSHA safety standards and achieve the following:

  • Lower rate of incidents or accidents
  • Improved ROI by minimizing workforce-related injuries and disruptions
  • Improved employee satisfaction levels
  • Lower attrition
  • Reduced cost of employee retention and management
  • Reporting and Analytics with predictive insights for preventing safety incidents


An EHS also becomes the single source of truth for all safety data within your enterprise. The key to automating your workplace health and safety processes revolves around the following steps:

  • To manage workplace safety interventions, design and build exhaustive processes, workflows, and checklists
  • To improve data visibility across the organisation, monitor and track workplace safety data in real-time
  • With a proactive mindset, act and take action based on predictive analytics
  • Take corrective or preventive action as and when needed to improve safety
steps to OSHA workplace safety


CQ EHS for OSHA safety standards

ComplianceQuest’s EHS 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 conducting a root cause analysis.
  • Risk Management: The risk management module lets you:
    • Maintain all hazards & 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 ensures business continuity and improves efficiency, visibility, and flexibility.


ComplianceQuest also offers enterprises with a Workplace Safety App for Work.com to help enterprises restart or resume operations after the pandemic. This app is also designed to handle various COVID-19 related health and safety risks.

The Workplace Safety app, which also aligns with the OSHA guidelines, has been designed with the following features:

  • Work.com command center to pull open the safety scores of any location. The color-coded approach helps you assess whether a location is a ‘Pass, Warning, or Fail’ quickly and efficiently.
  • Schedule and track inspections monthly or weekly
  • Track the capacity of any location-based on OSHA stipulated guidelines
  • Open CAPAs to ensure swift action is taken when needed
  • Access reports by location, by injury type, or by the time of reporting of an incident
  • Create checklists to track specialized requirements like PPE inventory, shop floor capacity requirements, and such.
workplace safety app


proactive OSHA workplace safety

For any app or system to be successful in meeting safety goals, the organization must ensure the following:

  • A proactive approach to workplace safety with commitment right from the top
  • A collaborative approach to mitigating health and safety risks
  • Hazard & Identification assessment
  • Hazard & prevention control
  • Education & training
  • Program evaluation & continuous improvement
  • Communication and coordination with contractors, and staffing agencies


As we mentioned in this blog, workplace safety begins at home. As on-site operations restart, enterprises need safety checks and processes covering the entire lifecycle of an employee:

  • Commute to and from work
  • Pre-Entry into the place of work
  • At work
  • Common areas
  • Post-Infection care
OSHA workplace safety lifecycle


OSHA guidelines

At ComplianceQuest, we’ve helped customers in 800+ locations across the world with automating their Quality & Safety Management processes. Built by a team with 1000+ man-hours of hands-on expertise in quality and safety, we help our customers build a flexible, scalable, seamless EHS that makes it extremely easy for a safety leader to build a continuously improving, data-driven process to meet OSHA guidelines and other safety management standards.

ComplianceQuest’s EHS and Workplace Safety app is designed to serve the enterprise in the following sectors:

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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Quality-centric Companies Rely on CQ QMS

  • Flex
  • continental
  • 3m logo
  • YKK
  • Qorvo
  • Canon
  • Stryker
  • Lam Research
  • Just Evotech
  • Tilray

OSHA workplace safety adheres employers to implement safety practices and become the single source of truth for all workplace safety

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Related Checklists

Frequently Asked Questions

  • 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 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.

    If you would like to simplify your process to meeting OSHA Guidelines, request us for a demo here: https://www.compliancequest.com/contact-us

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