Supervisors should review the 300A summary with employees
Date Posted: 02/01/2021
On February 1st, your company may have to post a summary of the previous year’s injury rates. However, if employees who look at the posting see only a bunch of numbers, it won’t have much impact. Explain that those numbers represent injuries to their coworkers.
Also, encourage supervisors to review the summary with their teams, and explain that every case represents an employee who was injured on the job. The days away or restriction represent workers who were injured seriously enough that they were unable to perform their routine job duties. In addition, some cases (such as hearing loss) may involve permanent injury (hearing loss cannot be restored with surgery or medication).
Those are coworkers, not just numbers
To make sure everyone understands what the numbers mean, explain to supervisors that:
- The summary shows the total number of injuries that required treatment beyond first aid, as well as the number of injuries that required work restrictions or days off work for recovery.
- The form lists the total number of days away and the total number of restricted days. For example, if seven employees were injured and each employee needed five days off to recover, the posting will indicate 35 total days away from work.
- The summary also shows injuries by type, such as skin disorders or hearing loss cases. If your company has a strong safety record (or if many jobs aren’t particularly hazardous) then some of the spaces may have zeros.
When supervisors review the summary with their teams, they can point out that workplace injuries can have serious and lasting impacts on the lives of employees. This is also an opportunity to discuss subjects like:
- What is the team’s safety record, and how does it compare to the company average?
- What has the team done over the last year to prevent injuries or eliminate hazards? What could they be doing more of during the coming year?
- Did anyone experience a near-miss that could have resulted in an injury, and was that hazard reported and addressed?
Some departments may be more dangerous than others (a maintenance shop presents more hazards than an office) but every area could experience injuries.
All employees should review the injury totals and think about what those numbers mean, particularly how each number represents an impact on the lives of their coworkers. With that in mind, everyone should think about what they’ve been doing to reduce injuries during the previous year, and what they are committed to doing in the future.
How Safety Management Suite Can Help
Tracking work-related injuries and creating the OSHA 300 Log can be challenging if done on paper. The J. J. Keller® SAFETY MANAGEMENT SUITE Incident Center helps you list all recordable cases. You can also track non-recordable cases to identify hazards, but keep them separated from your Log. At the end of the year, the tool helps you quickly create the 300A Annual Summary for posting.
E-mail Newsletter
Sign up to receive the weekly EHS Insider email newsletter for safety articles, news headlines, regulatory alerts, industry events, webcasts, and more. Enter your email address below and click submit. See Example
You may also enjoy the following articles:
Obligations and options for respirator medical evaluations