Page 22 - OHS, March 2021

TRAINING: LOCKOUT/TAGOUT
OSHA Top Ten Most Cited Violations Announcement
Delayed Due to COVID-19
Why investing in electrical safety is now more important than ever.
BY NICK SCHILTZ
Each year, safety conscious employers depend on the OSHA Top 10 Most Cited Violations data to better inform them on the riskiest scenarios in their safety programs. The official report may be delayed this year, but risk is still as
relevant as ever. The total violations are normally released at the end of the fiscal year in September. Though no official reason has been provided by OSHA for the now four-month delay, it is safe to assume that this is another practice that the pandemic has thrown into disarray.
Early reports indicate that due to the nature of this tumultuous year, OSHA violations have seen an increase across the board. However, this is pure speculation. We’ll be sure to keep an eye out and report on OSHA’s findings as soon as they become available, but in the meantime, we have found expert opinions on why OSHA’s Top 10 are important for employers to analyze and how the pandemic has affected safety.
Importance of OSHA’s Top 10 Report
Veteran safety consultants urge employers to keep an eye out for the annual OSHA Top 10 report. This list is one of the best starting points on the path toward fostering a robust safety culture, as one
safety consultant advises, “Minimally, an employer should have the responsibility of asking, ‘Do any of these Top 10 affect me?’ Because this is the easiest place if our friends from OSHA should come to visit,” said JoAnn Dankert, senior safety consultant at the National Safety Council.
With our electrical safety background, we look at this list to analyze the most cited violations for the Control of Hazardous Energy standard CFR 1910.147, which ranked 4th on the list last year. The data provides solutions on how to avoid the most common mistakes in electrical safety. The most important item to note is that the Training & Communication regulation CFR 1910.147(c)(7) is frequently at the top of OSHA’s most cited violations. Experts speculate that these numbers will be on the rise for 2020 as employers, with lost revenue amid the pandemic, most frequently cut their training budget early on.
“When revenue goes down, organizations tend to sometimes pull back on training,” said Dankert. “I would encourage people not to pull back on your safety training. With some things, we’re struggling within organizations because maybe we’ve done classroom training, but now because of physical distancing and so forth, we don’t want to put too many people in an area. That
18 Occupational Health & Safety | MARCH 2021
www.ohsonline.com
theDirector/Shutterstock.com