Last week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) finalized a new rule to change the process and timeline for recordkeeping and reporting of annual injuries and illnesses at the workplace. The new rule will now require electronic submission of injury/illness records to OSHA, which will then be scrubbed of individual personnel data and placed online for public review. As well, the size of each establishment will determine what will need to be reported. These changes are a drastic departure from the current process of simply displaying a paper summary of the injury/illness report (OSHA Form 300A) in the workplace for all employees to see annually between February 1 and April 30.

Specifically, the rule now requires:

1. All establishments with 250 or more employees at any time during the reporting year to electronically submit OSHA Form 300A (Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses), OSHA Form 300 (Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses) and OSHA Form 301 (Injury and Illness Incident Report) to OSHA or the appropriate OSHA designee;

2. All establishments with 20 to 249 employees to electronically submit OSHA Form 300A (Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses) to OSHA or the appropriate OSHA designee;

3. All establishments with 19 or fewer employees only need to submit information from the injury and illness records to OSHA if OSHA requests it through an individual data collection;

4. All employers with more than 10 employees must still display the completed OSHA Form 300A in the workplace for all employees to see annually between February 1 and April 30;

5. All required reports to be submitted to OSHA electronically (submittal process will be through a designated secure Web site, still yet to be completed); and

6. Electronic submission deadlines for:

a. 2017: For the establishments now required to submit, their respective forms are due to OSHA no later than July 1;

b. 2018: For the establishments now required to submit, their respective forms are due to OSHA no later than July 1; and

c. 2019 and beyond: For the establishments now required to submit, their respective forms are due to OSHA no later than March 2.

Additionally, "The final rule also amends OSHA’s recordkeeping regulation to update requirements on how employers inform employees to report work-related injuries and illnesses to their employer. The final rule requires employers to inform employees of their right to report work-related injuries and illnesses free from retaliation; clarifies the existing implicit requirement that an employer’s procedure for reporting work-related injuries and illnesses must be reasonable and not deter or discourage employees from reporting; and incorporates the existing statutory prohibition on retaliating against employees for reporting work-related injuries or illnesses. The final rule also amends OSHA’s existing recordkeeping regulation to clarify the rights of employees and their representatives to access the injury and illness records. "