OSHA Budget Boom: How EHS Technologies Support Compliance As Enforcement Increases

OSHA Budget Boom: How EHS Technologies Support Compliance As Enforcement Increases

Entering the federal fiscal year 2024, US firms may be facing increased occupational health and safety regulatory scrutiny. The US President’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is reviewing a proposal to significantly expand the federal budget of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Funding for OSHA is planned to increase to $738.7 million, a 17% growth of $106.3 million. The FY24 budget targets an increase of 16.3% for federal enforcement, 30% for federal compliance assistance and 26.3% for safety and health standards. In addition, the administration plans to hire 432 full-time employees, growing the organization by 21%. The new workforce will include 250 full-time equivalent employees focused on strengthening OSHA’s enforcement programme, who will conduct frontline compliance inspections or train future compliance officers. The budget is still pending approval from Congress, which has until the start of the fiscal year, October 1^st, to act. Although the proposals are subject to review, the OSHA’s budget breakdown signals its priority to enforce workplace health and safety standards.

OSHA is an integral component of the United States Department of Labor, which sets and enforces safety standards to ensure safe and healthy work environments. In the US improvement in worker fatality reduction is lagging, with only a 5% reduction in the past 15 years, as explored in a recent Verdantix blog. To enforce standards, OSHA cites private and public organizations failing to mitigate workplace injuries and fatalities: maximum penalties amount to $145,027 per repeated or wilful safety standard violation. During the 2022 fiscal year, the ten most common violations were:

1. Fall protection, general requirements – 5,980 violations
2. Hazard communication standard, general requirements – 2,682 violations
3. Respiratory protection, general industry – 2,471 violations
4. Ladders – 2,430
5. Scaffolding, general requirements - 2,285
6. Control of hazardous energy (lockout/tagout), general requirements – 2,175 violations
7. Powered industrial trucks, general requirements - 1,922 violations
8. Fall protection, training requirements - 1,778 violations
9. Eye and face protection - 1,582 violations
10. Machinery and machine guard, general requirements - 1,488 violations

The proposed budget expansion aims to bolster the inspection of worksites, penalty assessments and hazard abatement identification. In preparation, firms should consider adopting three kinds of technology to ensure compliance with future regulatory scrutiny. Firstly, EHS software is a valuable tool for organizations operating in industries across a broad range of risk categories. This enables frontline workers to report incidents and allows EHS managers to conduct a formal root cause investigation to inform lessons learned and risk mitigation strategies. Secondly, digital health and safety training solutions support the continuous improvement of worker H&S. For example, EHS provider HSI plans to lead in training content on worker health and safety through its active acquisition strategy, recently purchasing SafetySkills to expand its library with over 1,000 OSHA, EHS and HR compliance courses. Digital EHS training solutions help firms task and track worker competencies to mitigate the risk of forgetting mandatory practices on the most common OSHA violations. Finally, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are impactful tools to support at-height inspections, allowing organizations to forgo the cost of investing in fall protection and scaffolding.

To learn more about how technologies can support EHS compliance, read the Verdantix Tech Roadmap: EHS Technologies 2023. You can also find additional research on EHS topics here.