Top 10 OSHA Compliance Mistakes & Lessons Learned by a Small Business Owner

If you’ve followed over from my LinkedIn post, see the first of the Top 10 OSHA compliance mistakes made and lessons learned below…. And thanks for reading.

Dual Tasking An Existing Manager With OSHA Compliance Duties

Once I committed to implementing an OSHA compliance program, I quickly realized that I lacked the time, and knowledge to do it all on my own. I was always involved and active but needed help, so decided to delegate these responsibilities to my operations manager at the time. Being new to the company, he was eager to please and assured me that he “knew about safety” and would be happy to help out. Several weeks, and then months, soon passed and I began to wonder why he wasn’t making progress. Questions like “Where’s our updated safety manual?” “When and how are we going to train our new technicians?” were routinely met with delayed, or no responses at all, and when pressed he always told me “sorry, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet, we’re too busy.” After hearing this a few times, I began to realize he was right. I couldn’t realistically expect him to execute and manage all of the customer workload, while at the same time magically finding time to implement our OSHA compliance program.

I’ve found this to be a very, very common mistake, especially among small companies, regardless of the industry, and that is trying to dual task an Operations, Production, HR or even a maintenance manager with health and safety compliance.

There are 3 problems with this model: 1) the manager probably lacks the technical knowledge and experience required to implement a compliant program, and 2) even if they did have the ability, they don’t have the time to get it done because they’re primary role with the company plays a major role in contributing to the companies’ bottom line (getting widgets out the door, recruiting new staff, repairing equipment, etc..). A 3^rd problem can arise when assigning safety compliance to an Operations or Production manager, and that’s the inherent conflict of interests between production and safety (ie: good safety practices are often inconvenient, time consuming and expensive, and this nasty combination can get in the way of “getting things done”)

The end result is that health & safety never gets adequately addressed and the company persists in a dangerous state of non-compliance. This ends up putting employees at risk for serious injuries and even fatalities, and the company at risk for major OSHA fines and penalties as well as civil, criminal, reputational and other related risks.

Check back to the blog to learn about my other top 10 OSHA compliance mistakes and lessons learned….

Worried that your company isn’t OSHA compliant?

Worried About Getting Fined by OSHA?

Want to get compliant but don’t know how?

You Are Not Alone

Click Here To Learn More About OSHA Compliance Requirements

Give Us A Call at 512-457-0374

To Schedule Your Free Consultation

By Russell Carr|2022-03-21T12:50:49-05:00March 24th, 2016|Good To Know|Comments Off

About the Author: Russell Carr

How A Sales Guy Transformed Into An Environmental, Health & Safety Expert & Advocate For Small Businesses I've spent my entire 30+ year career working within the manufacturing and “industrial services” sectors. The first 15 years of my career focused on sales of hazardous materials related products and services to the manufacturing sector, then for the last 16+ years transitioned into entrepreneurship, founding 3 small industrial services related contracting businesses. As you’ll see below, running these companies eventually lead me to found yet a 4th business, but more on that in a minute…. Here’s a brief description of the first 3 companies: Berg Environmental Services, Inc.: hazardous waste disposal & transportation services, founded in August of 2003 3rd party wind energy operations & maintenance services provider to utility scale wind farms throughout the US, founded in September 2007 3rd party oil & gas exploration & production services provider, founded in August of 2011 Each of these companies operated in extremely dangerous working conditions and exposed my employees to a wide range of serious health & safety hazards on a daily basis. To complicate matters, 2 of the companies also exposed the environment to significant potential harm. In other words, I learned very early the critical importance of managing environmental, health and safety issues so as to ensure the safety of our employees and the environment, as well as minimizing related risks. But I also learned how incredibly difficult and challenging this endeavor can be due to the wide range of complicated and continually changing environmental, health and safety rules and regulations that impacted the companies. To summarize the challenges: First I had to determine which regulations applied to each company, then I had to build compliance programs to meet those regulations, and finally I had to ensure that the programs were being managed and followed by our staff on a daily basis. All while trying to run and grow 3 profitable businesses…. It was overwhelming and I always struggled to keep up. To make matters worse, throughout this time I also witnessed the devastating price that companies, management and ownership can pay for failing to manage EHS compliance. This included seeing one of my hazardous waste management clients get sent to jail over environmental issues, another client’s management team threatened with jail time, a direct competitor get fined $378,000 by OSHA fine after an employee was nearly killed, and many others face major fines and penalties. Full disclosure, one of my companies got fined by OSHA at one point, & another was cited by TCEQ, so I know how it feels. In summary, I learned first hand how incredibly difficult it is for small companies to manage EHS compliance due to a common lack of the critical expertise, time and resources that are needed to keep up, and how this situation then ends up exposing them to these potentially catastrophic risks that can literally destroy lives and businesses. This later inspired me to found my 4th company, Berg Compliance Solutions in 2012, which is dedicated to helping other small businesses, and business owners, to manage EHS compliance and risk. Education BA, Philosophy, University of Colorado, Boulder, December, 1990. Summary of Professional Experience & Qualifications: 30+ years serving the manufacturing & industrial services sectors 30+ years of sales and marketing experience 16+ years as small business owner & entrepreneur: Founded and operated 4 small businesses since 2003. Environmental, Health & Safety Compliance & Program Related: 19 plus years of hazardous waste management including EPA, TCEQ & RCRA regulations 8 years of DOT/FMCSA compliance experience, including hazardous materials transportation 8 years of combined experience implementing and managing OSHA health and safety compliance programs for 2 high risk energy services businesses Successfully implemented and gained ISO 9001 Quality Management Certification and OHSAS 18001 (Occupational Health & Safety Advisory Service) Certification for wind energy maintenance business. Regulatory Enforcement Related Experience: Served as expert witness in criminal environmental compliance enforcement cases Superfund-CERCLA OSHA enforcement inspections, investigations and resolution in following industries: industrial services, manufacturing & construction. TCEQ enforcement inspections, investigations and resolution in manufacturing.

Top 10 OSHA Compliance Mistakes & Lessons Learned by a Small Business Owner