On this note you are going to learn about how to avoid a common and costly citation, "Accident Log Requirements", "Exempted companies and industries", "Special Situations: Multi-employer","How to fill out the OSHA form 300, 300A and 301" and I hope will be able to answer this common question "Is this a recordable accident?".
Besides the citation of not having an Injury and Illness Prevention Program (IIPP), the absence of the accident log is becoming the next most important common XXXXXX citation for federal OSHA and Cal-OSHA.
There is a lot of misunderstanding out there about who must use the accidents log or who doesn't, as same as which company must have an IIPP (even when the answer is very simple: "ALL" with 2 or more employees). We can blame this general confusion to a misinterpretation of the standards. The problem is aggravated because some companies are following lawyers or insurance representatives guidelines which most part of them are not safety compliance professionals. The result of this confusion during an OSHA inspection are fines of $5,000 per each no reported accident, up to $7,000 per the missing log, and $24,000 for not to having an IIPP. I hope that after you read this, all doubts about how to fill this form, or at least the most important ones, will be cleared.
Requirements
You should be logging each accident in your OSHA log when it happens (you have up to 7 days to do it, unless you didn't know about it), and keep track of the accident and update the record through the year. And post the log summary page, OSHA 300A, from February 1 to April 30 of the year following the year covered by the form.
Regardless of the industry, even those who are been exempted to fill out the log: all companies must log needle-sticks and sharp injuries in the logs and report any amputation, death, or hospitalization of 24hs or more during the first 8 hr to your OSHA office. Fines of $5,000 are applicable per each not reported accident.
Exemptions
The general rule is that all companies of 10 or less
employees are exempted to fill out the OSHA log form. There is two exemption to this rule, one is explained above under the title "Requirements", the second one is if
Cal-OSHA or Federal OSHA is surveying your company, because they will require that you keep the record.
For the complete list of exempted companies on California please click here (this list is different for federal OSHA).
Special situation
Agency employees, Construction sites and Subcontractors: each accident must be recorded only once independently to whom is responsible for the employee pay check. Example: if the agency employee is "directly supervised" by the company who hired the agency, then the accident is going to be recorded on the OSHA 300 log of the company who has been "supervising the employee at the moment of the accident". This rule applies when working with subcontractors and at any multiemployer work sites like a construction sites.
If you don't have the form now is a good time download it. Both formats are good to use, but in my opinion excel its better because you can expand the cell, it adds the days and transfer the results to one section to another and because you will be able to save a copy in your computer for each reported year. In any case, once they have been fill out, print them and keep the record.
Click here for PDF or Click here for Excel
How to fill the OSHA 300 log
Column (A), you can use employee number to identify the accident or any other number or system that makes sense for you (e.g.: 1,2,3...)
Columns (B), (C) and (D) are very straight forward. About the date you need to write down the date that the employee claims that the accident happened. Does not matter that the accident happened a month ago and you just learned about it today. You must add the accident on the log keeping the mind the year where it happened, you can not add in 2010's log an 2009 accident.
Column (E) and (F): describe as much as you want, expand the cell, use the next line, modify the form until your information fits.
Columns (G) to (J) you need to choose only ONE option, even if at first the employee did remain working and latter on he/she was away from work.
Columns (K) and (L): for those accidents that the employee stays away from
work or in modify work for a long period of time, you should stop
counting after 180 days or 6 months (consider the sum of days away and days with job transfer to stop counting). Important: all counting must be kept on the correspondent log's year, no counting transfer needs to made to the next year's log (even when the accident happened on December 31st and the employee was away from work for 50 days).
Column (M): just choose the best description that suits the accident.
