23 minute read
How to Manage an OSHA Inspection— Before, During, and After
FEATURE
How to Manage an OSHA Inspection— Before, During, and After
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By Robert Tuman, CCR Safety Consulting
Note: OSHA citations are available to the public without login and password, and easily accessed by going to the OSHA.gov website and entering “Establishment Search” in the search box on the upper right hand side.
Preparing tor an OSHA Inspection 1. Have your safety documentation
readily available and keep copies centrally located in 3-ring binders in your trailer or Forepersons’ vehicles. For example, and note that this is not an all-inclusive list, include your Injury and Illness Prevention Program (with signed employee acknowledgement that they have read, understand, and will comply with, for example, your Code of Safe Practices), list of required Personal Protective Equipment- again with employees’ acknowledgements that they have read and will comply, Hazard Communication (Globally Harmonized System) program, Safety Data Sheets (“SDS”), annual OSHA Summary of Injuries and Illnesses, signed and dated safety meetings and exposure-specific Qualified Person and Competent Person safety training records and other proof of exposure-specific safety training- i.e. OSHA 10 or 30 Hour Construction Safety training. Further, include Job Safety/Job Hazard Analyses, Site-Specific Safety Plans, Pre-Task Safety Plans, and safety inspections, citing corrective actions you took to protect employees and, if you subcontract work, your subcontractors’ safety documents.
Additionally, file copies of current employees’ and subcontractors’ employees’ completion of training certifications and licenses- i.e. aerial lift, forklift/rough terrain forklift/ reach lift, powder-actuated nail gun, hydraulics engineers’ licenses or proof of equipment training. 2. Post your OSHA Log (summary of your prior year’s work-related injuries and illnesses) from February 1st through April 30th. Don’t have anywhere to post this document except in your office or break room?
Provide Foremen with copies to keep
in their vehicles and in your jobsite trailer if you have one. 3. Post your Personal Protective
Equipment zero tolerance policy, with enforcement language, on every jobsite. This should state that you require, for example, hardhats, safety glasses, high visibility vests, work boots, pants and shirts, and risk-and- exposure-specific Personal Protective
Equipment- i.e. face and nose coverings, respirators, hearing protection, and document the disciplinary action you’ve taken against employees who you observed violating your PPE policy. 4. Have signed and dated tool and equipment self-inspections readily available, and include corrective actions, if any. A tip: ask employees and subcontractors’ employees to bring extension cords and tools to weekly safety meetings for documented inspection, and take damaged or inoperable tools, equipment, and cords out of service. 5. Hold employees and subcontractors accountable for weekly equipment tests and inspections. For example, hold electrical subcontractors responsible for inspecting and testing ground fault circuit interrupters (“GFCI”) weekly and for submitting these signed and dated inspections and corrective actions. 6. Hold your and subcontractors’ personnel responsible for daily cleanup of their work areas and continual organization and reorganization of materials and equipment to minimize slips, trips and falls. 7. Designate an experienced, trained, and personable manager as the company go-to person for OSHA inspections. 8. Have and maintain a digital camera on each jobsite and take photos or videos of actions you have taken to protect workers. Keep it in a sealed bag, keep it charged, and if necessary add additional memory.
During the Inspection
9. Introduce yourself and be friendly and courteous. Ask your designated OSHA ombudsman to join you. Ask the OSHA Compliance Officer (“CO”) for identification and a business card. If there was an accident or apparent reason (i.e. a roofer falls 28’ and is taken by ambulance to the hospital) for an OSHA inspection, ask the Compliance Officer to detail the reason for the inspection. The
Compliance Officer should conduct an “opening conference”, during which the Compliance Officer details why OSHA is inspecting your jobsite.
Was there an anonymous complaint (ask for a copy of the complaint), did she or he observe a fall hazard or other safety violation while driving by the jobsite, or is the inspection part of a Local, Regional, and/or
National Emphasis Program allowing warrantless inspections? OSHA cannot and will not provide the name of the party making the complaint or other identifying information. You may know or sense that you know the person(s)’ identity, but don’t go fishing- it could backfire on you in the form of an allegation of retaliation. 10. Provide information and documentation only when asked.
Sometimes you can compound matters by providing potentially incriminating information and documentation. For example, if you wish or are asked to provide a copy of an unsatisfactory self-inspection, make sure you provide the completed corrective action plan. 11. Accompany the Compliance Officer during her or his inspection and take pictures and/or video of what she or he takes pictures of and note what she or he is observing. 12. Be nice but don’t fall all over the inspector. Don’t BS the inspector, as they have a good nose for BS and many have worked in the trades. 13. Make employees available to the
Compliance Officer if she or he asks to interview them in private. OSHA has the right to talk to employees without their managers present.
Employees can have a union or employee representative present during these interviews. Arrange for space where they can talk in private.
After the interview, employees might want to discuss what they told the
Compliance Officer, but don’t probe.
Wait for them to come to you. 14. Ask the Compliance Officer for a face-to-face “closing conference”a summary of her or his findings.
OSHA may prefer to conduct a closing conference by phone- which is perfectly acceptable, but request a face-to-face closing conference so that you can assure and show the CO that you took definitive corrective actions right after the inspection, and that you have sustained your efforts to keep employees safe. This goes a long way to show an Informal
Conference hearing officer that you are serious about minimizing injury and illness risks and exposures. 15. Employers’ knee jerk reflex during closing conferences is to ask if they will be fined and the amount of the fine. Don’t even bother, as the
CO cannot and will not tell you the amount of the fine.
After the Closing Conference
16. Review the findings with affected employees and subcontractors.
OSHA likes to see that you took corrective action immediately after the inspection, so don’t wait until you get the citation. For example, if the
CO observed employees working without fall protection, implement and document fall protection training and a mandatory fall protection program. If you have a long-standing fall protection program which was violated, discipline the violators, including Foremen, and document that have done so- to prove to OSHA that you took timely corrective action. OSHA wants to see a history of disciplinary actions- not just the disciplinary action taken against recent violators. 17. Correct safety deficiencies, if any, as soon as possible, document your corrective actions, and provide OSHA with copies. If you need additional time to correct deficiencies (i.e. scheduling and completing OSHA 10-Hour training, conducting fall protection training, aerial lift and other
trainings), provide the Compliance
Officer with your timetable and keep her or him informed of your progress toward completion of training. 18. Update the Compliance Officer as you complete each action item or have completed a group of action items.
Don’t wait until all corrective actions have been taken.
When You Get the Citation
19. ALWAYS schedule an Informal
Conference, as you want to have the opportunity to present your case in an informal, free-flowing session with an OSHA manager- often an
Assistant Area Director. You have 15 workdays from the date you receive the citation to participate in an
Informal Conference. For example, if you receive the citation the afternoon of December 24th, you have until
January 16th to complete the Informal
Conference. You definitely want to go to an Informal Conference well before the “contest date”, the deadline for contesting one or more citations. You want to give yourself enough time before the “contest date” to make a deliberate and informed decision whether to contest or pay the fine. 20.Provide copies of the citation(s) to your in house OSHA liaison and to affected employees and subcontractors. Meet to determine the accuracy of the citations. 21. Fact find with employees or subcontractors’ employees who claim they “didn’t do it.” An employee who vehemently claimed he was not exposed to a fall hazard unexpectedly and embarrassingly “fessed up” during the Informal Conference when the hearing officer produced a photo of him without fall protection. The owner was embarrassed and felt forced to pay the full amount of the fine. 22.Compliance Officers sometimes make unintentional mistakes. I was able to get multiple citations transferred from a roofing client to its subcontractor, as my client had an “arm’s length” relationship with its roofing subcontractor. The subcontractor didn’t endear himself to OSHA when the foreman, asked nicely to come down from the roof to talk with the Compliance Officer, refused to come down and bring his crew off the roof. To make matters worse, he threw a bundle of shingles at the Compliance Officer. The State of Maine OSHA Regional Director told me that he almost called the FBI to arrest the foreman.
The Informal Conference
23.NEVER, EVER MAKE EXCUSES, PLAY
THE BLAME GAME, OR COMPLAIN
THAT THE CITATIONS WILL PUT
YOU OUT OF BUSINESS. If one or more of the citations are factually incorrect, bring convincing evidence supporting your request to rescind them. However, if you were clearly in violation, try to reduce the fine and change the citation’s category (i.e. from “Serious” to “Other” than serious). 24.When a client has been guilty of the cited violations, I asked for whatever consideration the hearing officer could give. The extent of this
“consideration” will be based on a number of factors, including but not limited to your OSHA history, the magnitude of the violation, and what you are now doing and will continue to do to keep your employees safe, and timely corrective actions you took between the inspection and Informal
Conference. Accordingly, if you were cited for lack of a specific safety training (i.e. fall protection training), bring copies of fall protection training records and other safety training rosters with participants’ printed names and signatures. 25.If an employee or subcontractor’s employee repeatedly violated an
OSHA standard or generally-accepted safe work practice, bring a copy of current and prior disciplinary memoranda evidencing your longstanding safety disciplinary program. 26.At the end of the Informal Conference the hearing officer will detail terms of a settlement agreement. If you perceive these to be fair, sign the agreement and arrange to pay the fine or opt for a payment plan. 27. If however you have convincing evidence that one or more citations are factually inaccurate, submit a “contest letter” with a request to schedule an administrative hearing. The OSHA hearing officer will generally help you with the wording.
If and When OSHA Returns (or Doesn’t Return)
28.OSHA may or may not return to your jobsites. Hopefully you will be higher on the learning curve after the first inspection. However, it might not be a bad idea to either enroll in
OSHA’s voluntary consultation and inspection program, an industrysanctioned inspection program and have your safety officer perform regular unannounced “mock OSHA” inspections, with a “how did we do?” discussion after the inspection, asking participants to comment and recommend corrective actions.
Given that construction can be inherently high risk, there exists a high probability that OSHA will visit a jobsite at some point after the Informal Conference. The bigger the project, the greater the probability of an OSHA inspection. You can look at an inspection as an annoyance, as disruptive, and as counterproductive, or you can look at inspections as a learning experience and an integral part of your efforts to keep employees and subcontractors’ employees safe. I subscribe to the latter, as I know that my clients emerged from OSHA inspections at times a bit poorer, but certainly better informed and more enlightened.
I want to thank all the OSHA Compliance Officers I have had the opportunity to get to know. I have found them fair, generally even-handed, and passionate about protecting workers.
About the Author:
Bob Tuman is president of CCR Safety Consulting in California, providing safety consultation to construction contractors and performing Workers’ Compensation and General Liability Loss Control Surveys for property and casualty insurers. For further information or to contact CCR directly, please contact: 805545-5976 or email bobtuman@gmail.
com
FEATURE
Psychological Safety Is Key for Enabling Diversity in the Workplace
by Dale Carnegie Staff
• Diverse teams can achieve greatness, but they need to exist in an inclusive environment that promotes psychological safety • Psychological safety rests on the assurance that a team member will not be ridiculed or punished for making a mistake or speaking up with an idea • The Dale Carnegie principles promote the cultural competencies necessary to cultivate psychological safety within diverse teams.
When was the last time someone told you “there are no stupid questions”? Did you believe them? Maybe you’ve said this as a manager, hoping to encourage discussion and help with clarity among your team. But in workplaces where inclusion and diversity are lacking, these attempts to open the lines of communication are met with silence.
Diversity in business has many benefits, but it is not as simple as assembling a group of diverse people. The pathway to diversity is found in the act of inclusion. Dale Carnegie’s steps to an inclusive environment include growing self-confidence, taking a genuine interest in others, becoming aware of cultural differences, and developing the cultural competencies necessary to sustain these changes.
Studies have shown that diverse teams perform better, are more innovative, and experience better general health and happiness than non-diverse teams. To create a diverse team that can provide these results, each team member must feel psychologically safe. Developing an environment that fosters inclusion requires this key element.
What Is Psychological Safety?
Although the concept of psychological safety has been researched since the 1960s, the term was coined decades later by organizational behavioral scientist Amy Edmondson of Harvard. Psychological Safety is “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.”. Psychological safety can only be created in an environment of mutual respect and trust—the same requirements necessary for sustained diversity.
Determining whether this exists within a workplace requires critical and honest analysis and reflection. Ask yourself, do team members ask questions or offer suggestions within meetings or group settings? Do team members quickly admit to mistakes and reach out for help
when needed? Just as there are hurdles to reaching diversity through inclusion, there are hurdles to overcome when creating a climate where psychological safety can exist. The benefits, however, are well worth the effort.
Benefits of Psychological Safety
In Aristotle’s Metaphysics, he writes, “many things have a plurality of parts and are not merely a complete aggregate but instead some kind of a whole beyond its parts.” Diverse teams can be so much more than the sum of each individual, but only if that team exists in a psychologically safe space.
This was the belief that fueled Google’s Project Aristotle, which determined that psychological safety is the single most important factor leading to team success and, in fact, serves as the foundation for the next four components of an effective team. But Google wasn’t the first one to draw this conclusion.
Among many others, William Kahn connected the importance of being able to share your authentic self with others to a person’s level of personal engagement at work. He found that “interpersonal relationships promoted psychological safety when they were supportive and trusting.” He describes environments where workers can fail or speak up without fearing consequences.
When it comes to speaking up, Gallup data reports that only three in ten US employees feel their opinions matter at work. Raise this number to six in ten and businesses could see turnover reduce by 27%, safety incidents decrease by 40%, and productivity rise by 12%. Despite these business positives, the majority of workers do not claim their workspace to be psychologically safe.
Barriers to Psychological Safety
Ever since cavemen started running from saber-toothed tigers, humans have learned to protect themselves from harm. In the modern office, these tigers may take the form of negative gossip, intimidation, public embarrassment for mistakes, or even threats of demotion. No one wants to seem ignorant, disruptive, incapable, or pessimistic. And the easiest way to avoid appearing so is to remain silent. In many business environments, disengaging is more beneficial to an individual than speaking up.
This “workplace silencing” is perpetuated by negative behaviors and closed mindsets. It doesn’t matter how a team is put together or who is on it. What matters is the way team members communicate and interact with each other. Interactions that admonish or belittle others, their culture, or their ideas work directly against a climate of psychological safety. The results of admitting ignorance or fault or of voicing a contrary opinion are perceived as an interpersonal threat, which causes team members to withdraw.
Every time a team member withholds their full self, they are robbing the team of an opportunity for learning and inclusivity. But the burden cannot be placed on the worker alone. Sustained diversity in an environment of psychological safety requires the efforts of everyone: executives, managers, and employees alike. Every team member needs to learn and practice daily the skills and cultural competencies necessary to overcome these barriers.
How Dale Carnegie Cultivates Psychological Safety
From not criticizing, condemning, or complaining to never telling someone “you’re wrong,” the Dale Carnegie principles work directly toward creating an environment and relationship of psychological safety. Even something as simple as knowing a team member’s name can make a huge difference in a person’s feeling of belonging. In How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie brings attention to a particular story in which a Texas businessman articulates that “the executive who tells me he can’t remember names is at the same time telling me he can’t remember a significant part of his business.” Each member of a diverse team is significant to the project’s success and should be treated as such.
Effective teams work toward the same goal by bringing their collective ideas and energies together. To build or renew psychological safety within the team, Dale Carnegie says leaders should “keep emphasizing, if possible, that you are [all] striving for the same end and that your only difference is one of method and not of purpose.” When teams follow a common purpose, the details, such as whose idea is implemented, become inconsequential to the overall goal. This allows teams to come to a common agreement and successfully complete tasks.
These efforts at inclusivity and diversity must be backed up by selfconfidence, an interest in others, cultural awareness, and cultural competencies. Only through these steps can a workplace create and benefit from an inclusive and psychologically safe space. This is what it means to have diversity and to harness that diversity to bring good onto a team and into the world.
About the Editor:
Robert Graves, MBA, is a Dale Carnegie Certified Trainer for Dale Carnegie Tampa Bay. His focus is Relationship Selling. He is the author of “Making More Money with Technology.” He often speaks on the evolution of Marketing, Sales, and Service. Robert can be reached at robert. graves@dalecarnegie.com or call/text 813-966-3058.
About Dale Carnegie:
Dale Carnegie is a global training and development organization specializing in leadership, communication, human relations, and sales training solutions. More than 9 million people around the world have graduated from Dale Carnegie training since it was founded in 1912. Dale Carnegie Training can help an organization build effective interpersonal skills that generate the positive emotions essential to a productive work environment and that lead to increased employee engagement.
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FEATURE
Nine Strategies for a Safer Construction Business
by Duane Craig, Writer
There is plenty of talk about safety in construction. While many safety efforts aim to reduce costs, people are also discussing the greater benefit of reducing pain and suffering.
The industry is incentivizing builders to improve safety outcomes. Fewer threats to worker safety and health mean fewer regulations. At the business level, your project safety record is increasingly an indicator of your business’s viability. Try these nine strategies to improve your safety outcomes.
Strategy 1: Get an On-Site Safety Consultation
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) now offers safety consultations to help you find your safety risks. These are free and confidential, meaning no reports, citations, or penalties.
Consultations also help you improve any existing safety and health program and can let you qualify for a oneyear exemption from routine OSHA inspections. Because of the pandemic, some areas use videoconferencing for consultations. Here’s how to find the consultation office nearest you.
Strategy 2: Set Up and Use a Safety Program
Besides reducing human suffering and deaths, the rewards of a safety program include lowering the direct and indirect costs of injuries. Direct costs include medical treatment, worker absences, disability settlements, costs to manage the cases, and increases in your workers’ compensation experience modifier. Indirect costs include the time to process claims, the costs of substitute workers, productivity losses, overtime, investigation time, documentation costs, rework, and hits to your company’s reputation.
Strategy 3: Adjust your Safety Program to Match the Risks Faced by Each Employee Population
Each demographic faces different risks. Between 1992 and 2017, the number of working people 55 and older doubled, according to the recent
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But in 2017, older workers were 56% more likely to die from job-related causes than in 1992. If you are a self-employed contractor 55 or older, you are 2.3 times more likely to die from work-related causes when compared to the group of workers 54 and younger. If you are a construction manager 55 or older, your group is 1.5 times more likely to die from occupational injuries than younger managers.
In 2018, the Pew Research Center reported that approximately one in four construction workers fit the immigrant category. That’s a significant risk percentage, and language barriers further amplify it. Try showing—instead of just talking—about safety. You can also improve outcomes by confirming people understand safety requirements.
Strategy 4: Adjust Your Safety Program to Account for the Unique Risks of Your Specialty
Incidence rates show the number of injuries and illnesses per 100 full-time workers. For instance, construction overall has an incident rate of 2.8. The rate varies considerably between different construction specialties, with framing contractors recording a rate of 4.5 while finish carpentry is 2.2. You can even get into the details about the sources of injuries and the events leading to the injuries, illnesses, or fatalities.
Knowing the risks, and level of risks your workers face, helps you focus on the factors contributing to those risks as you customize your safety program.
Strategy 5: Work on Reducing Musculoskeletal Disorders
Start looking at your work practices to reduce musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). While caused mainly by overexertion and bodily reaction to forces, you can use ergonomic assessment tools to discover the activities most dangerous to your workers.
Across all industries, overexertion and bodily reaction are the leading causes of injury and illness resulting in missed work. Besides pain and suffering, injuries contribute to the nation’s problem of prescription pain medication dependence and overdose.
Businesses can make a difference in this national health issue by addressing the problems behind MSDs. MSDs come from repetitive motion, working overhead, bending over while lifting, and working in awkward positions for extended periods.
People most frequently injure their backs, followed by the hands. Shoulder injuries and knee injuries come in third and fourth. Although injuries from overexertion and bodily reaction have declined over the years, they still remain the most common nonfatal injury type.
Strategy 6: Increase Safety Emphasis With Temporary Workers
Construction, like many other industries, is relying more and more on temporary workers. Whether the workers come from a staffing agency, state or local program, or as a direct hire for a short-term project, it’s best to assume they won’t be familiar with the hazards and how to avoid them.
Work closely with the staffing agency so contract workers get the safety training applicable to the job they’ll be doing. Training temporary workers in every safety aspect might require assigning someone to stick with them throughout a few days to guide them in the proper safety protocols and teach them about the hazards. When temporary workers aren’t fluent in the dominant language of the job, they need safety training best conducted in their native language.
Strategy 7: Get Some New Tech on Board
Since safety is such a high-profile issue nowadays, many tech providers are stepping up with tools that help improve safety outcomes. Today’s trend in safety tools is called ‘smart PPE,’ that is, smart personal protective equipment. This wearable tech can collect, monitor and report worker health markers. It can even provide alerts to prompt workers to change a behavior or avoid an accident.
Triax Spot-r technology brings safety down to the individual level. It uses a secure network and wearable devices to give you a view of worker attendance and locations. The data flows right into your cost code and time-keeping systems in Procore. It can also ascertain your swift response to safety incidents and accidents thanks to the data collected by the wearable sensors.
Strategy 8: Make safety the first thought
There’s a lot of talk about creating cultures of safety. Many companies are well on their way, if not there already. When you have a culture of safety, you have everyone working on safety. They always think before they act, and they’re not afraid to stop and consider danger before diving in. You’ve got to make it an organizational thing where leadership sets the tone, pace, and example.
Strategy 9: Adopt leading indicators
Collecting and analyzing lagging indicators helps you respond to safety issues after the fact. However, when you collect and analyze leading indicators, you have time to be proactive about safety. Create leading indicators by reviewing the workplace hazards you’ve identified. By making them specific, measurable, accountable, reasonable, and timely, you end up with a program that can prevent accidents.
About the Author
Duane Craig - Following roles as photojournalist, education director, landscaper and residential project manager/superintendent, Duane moved to writing for a less stressful life. For the past 14 years Duane has covered the construction, food, finance and tech industries.
This article was reprinted with permission from Procore. It was originally published April 24, 2022.
