1. The Cost of Non-Compliance with State & OSHA Regulations
Paula Mathews
Founder/President, HR Compliance 101, LLC
Good afternoon. I’m Paula Mathews, founder & President of HR Compliance Growing up as a chicken farmer’s daughter in Westmoreland, NH, I wanted to be a teacher from the time I was 6 years old, so my undergraduate degree is in Education. I spent 3 years teaching in the public education system and ended up in HR by accident with my first job in manufacturing. After spending 23 years in Corporate America, I left when their ethics & mine took diverging paths and I started my own business with the idea of being a strategic partner with small businesses, wearing the HR, Safety, Training, Compliance and sometimes the Hire/Fire hats for them. Having started one week before 9/11, I’m in the 14th year of my business and loving it. I help my clients create the company culture they’ve always wanted, create excellent employee relations, comply with State and Federal regulations, and create a stable foundation for growth with defined policies, procedures and handbooks. I work with companies like yours in the construction, retail, funeral, software development, manufacturing, farming, and financial industries. We help you create a productive, safe and regulatory-compliant workplace. Our goal is to reduce your turnover to 0% and to create a culture that encourages your employees to do their best work.
Bringing over 35 years of Human Resource & Safety experience to you today, the topics we will be covering this afternoon focus on some of the specific Safety & Health regulations that may apply to your company and industry. Since we have a full agenda, I’ll field questions based on our available time. If you haven’t already done so, you are welcome to take a minute & complete the pre-test as we are getting started. You’ll find our agenda for today in your packet as well.

2. I’d like to begin by talking about creating a formal procedure for reporting accidents/incidents in your workplace. If you don’t want your employees reporting their work-related accidents & incidents to your Workers’ Compensation insurance carrier or to OSHA, you should have a procedure that your employees can use and that your management team can follow. This procedure should include your applicable documents and who is responsible for which actions.

3. OSHA Form 300
This form is a good one to use to keep track of your work-related injuries & illnesses, should you have any that are more than just the First Aid, boo-boos that don’t involve loss of time, or medical attention beyond first aid. OSHA requires this form unless you are in one of the exempted industries. Whether you are exempted or not, it makes sense to use this form.

4. OSHA Form 301
This form may be used to document something more than a minor boo-boo.

5. OSHA Form 300A
This is the form used to report your summary at the end of the year. You post it so that you notify all of your employees about your safety record.

6. This is a new OSHA Recordability Flowchart which clients have found useful in categorizing their incidents & injuries.

7. This is NH’s first report of injury
This is NH’s first report of injury. This is the ONLY form that your employee fills out. The rest are your responsibility. Every state has it’s own form.

8. This is the Employer’s first report of injury and must be submitted no later than seven days after date of injury or suffer a penalty of up to $

9. First Aid Log Date Location Employee Injury/Illness Result
Supervisor Initials
If it is just a boo-boo, a First Aid log will be sufficient documentation.

10. NEAR MISS LOG Date Location Situation Preventive Action
Responsible Party
Folks laugh at me about our Near Miss log, but you should ask your employees to tell you when they ALMOST get hurt. This way, your management team can also review this log for patterns.

11. Next, we’ll talk about your Emergency Response Plan.
This program should include all 8 elements, especially a designated safety zone.
Purpose Preferred means for reporting fires and other emergencies General principles of use for fire extinguisher use
Emergency escape procedures and escape routes Designated interior & exterior safety zones
Shutdown procedures in the event of an emergency Procedures to account for all employees after emergency evacuation has been completed
Rescue and medical duties Contacts for information about this plan
Although this isn’t part of your Emergency Response Plan, you should know what your response would be if the local fire dept called you at 3:00 in the morning and said your building was burned to the ground. Are all of your records backed up off site?

12. First Aid Box Checklist
Order Quantity
Supply
Expiration Date
Location
Adhesive Bandage 1” x 3”
Adhesive Bandage ¾ x 3”
Adhesive Tape ½ x 5yd
Alcohol Prep Pads 10pk
Alcohol Prep Pads 100pk
Ammonia Inhalant 10pk
Antiseptic Spray 2oz pump
Bandage Fingertip
Bandage Knuckle
Burn Relief Spray 2 oz
Cold Pack Instant
Eye Dressing Packet
Eye-lert 4oz Eye Wash
Forcepts
Scissors
Gauze Compress 24” x 72”
Gauze Roll 2”
Latex Gloves
PVP Iodine Wipe 100pk
Sterile Pad 3” X 3”
You may not need or want a First Aid Box Checklist, but if you have several kits, this form may help you keep track of supplies and the locations of your kits.

13. Your Hazard Communication Program should have been revised to incorporate revisions to the OSHA Standard. There are 8 critical elements to this program too, including a list of all known hazardous chemicals. The 8 elements are: Company’s policy, Container Labeling, the responsibility for establishing & monitoring your SDS system, potential for BBP, Training & Information, Training Other employers about your specific hazards, list of your hazardous chemicals, and program availability.

14. I’ve included a sample form with your packet
I’ve included a sample form with your packet. When completed, it’ll look somewhat like this.

15. Also, as of 2016, the HCS will require pictograms on secondary labels
Also, as of 2016, the HCS will require pictograms on secondary labels. These same 9 pictograms have been agreed upon as universal & global symbols.

16. You may have heard of MSDS or Material Safety Data Sheets
You may have heard of MSDS or Material Safety Data Sheets. Your revised program needs to refer these as Safety Data Sheets in the new 16-section format. Your MSDS books need to become SDS books, and your old sheets will be replaced with new as the chemical manufacturers provide updates. The Hazard Communication Standard (HCS), will require that these updates be completed by June 1, That hasn’t happened but they are getting closer to completion. DO NOT THROW AWAY the old sheets. They need to be kept in a retained file for future reference in the event that an ex-employee reports an illness related to exposure of a chemical while working for you.

17. This is one example of what the new SDS sheets will look like
This is one example of what the new SDS sheets will look like. Get your reading glasses out.

18. 4. Potential for Bloodborne Pathogen exposure:
No employees, other than those certified personnel specifically authorized by management, are allowed to clean up blood or other bodily fluids other than their own. Employees, in the performance of their normal duties for The Company Name, are not reasonably anticipated to have exposure to blood or other bodily fluids.
There may be employees on the payroll who can reasonably be expected to respond to a workplace injury, even though a formal First Aid team is not in place. This reasonable expectation stems from the fact that they may be a certified EMT or trained & certified on Adult CPR & First Aid. (certification would include thorough training on OSHA’s Bloodborne Pathogen requirements.) If this is the case, they would be provided with the required PPE to address the injury until the arrival of emergency medical personnel. In the event of an incident in the workplace, management would adhere to OSHA’s Bloodborne Pathogen protocol for reporting & addressing the incident.
If, in the performance of their normal duties, your employees are not REASONABLY anticipated to have exposure to blood or other bodily fluids, then a few simple paragraphs can be added to your Hazard Communication program. You may have employees on your payroll who can reasonably be expected to respond to a workplace injury stemming from the fact that they are a certified EMT or certified in Adult CPR & First Aid. If they hold those certifications, they have received thorough training on OSHA’s Bloodborne Pathogen Program and know what protective clothing & measures to take. In that case, you would want to provide them with a BBP kit.
Most elements of this kit can be purchased at your local Dollar Store or Ocean State Job Lots.

19. BLOODBORNE PATHOGEN EXPOSURE CONTROL PLAN
Facility Name: _________________________________________________________ Date of Preparation:______________________________________________________ The following exposure control plan has been developed in accordance with the OSHA Bloodborne Pathogens Standard, 29 CRF A. Purpose The purpose of this exposure control plan is to eliminate or minimize employee occupational exposure to blood or certain other body fluids. B. Exposure Determination The following list identifies those employees who may incur occupational exposure to blood or other potentially infectious materials. It is made without regard to the use of personal protective equipment (i.e. employees are considered to be exposed even if they wear personal protective equipment).
If your employees have occupational exposure to blood or other bodily fluids, you are required to have a customized Bloodborne Pathogen Program. This program needs to meet the OSHA Standard and your employees need to receive documented training.

20. Any employee exposed to blood or other body fluids also needs to have a Hepatitis B form on file, either consenting to the series, or declining the shots. Employers need to provide these vaccinations at no cost to the employee and the employee can change his mind about getting the vaccination at any time in the future.

21. A recommended best practice for your Bloodborne Pathogen Program is to create a Personal Protective Equipment Assessment Chart, so that employees can easily see what kind of protective equipment you require or recommend for any given task. A sample form is in your packet.
This chart should also be completed if your work environment is such that your employees are required to use PPE equipment to perform their job functions.

22. A best practice is to create a Joint Loss Management Committee
A best practice is to create a Joint Loss Management Committee. This committee used to be known as your Safety committee. It should have representatives from both management and employees. This committee should meet at least quarterly, identify workplace hazards and take corrective action on them. This committee addresses any Safety concerns and reviews your First Aid Logs and your OSHA 300 logs. Your committee members are looking for the root causes to accidents and to take corrective actions to prevent future accidents. This is a sample of an agenda for a 1st meeting. Prior to 1/1/13, your JLMC members needed to meet quarterly and post minutes of these meetings if you had 5 or more employees. On 1/1/13, this requirement changed to 15 employees or more, literally wiping out the bottom third of my client base. For 20 or more employees, you need 2 management reps & 2 elected employee reps.

23. Even if you aren’t required to have a safety committee, it IS an OSHA requirement that you identify workplace hazards and take corrective action on them. This form can easily document that activity for you. Once corrective action has been taken, these documents should be maintained to prove that the Company takes the safety of their employees very seriously.

24. As part of educating your employees, you should also have a Safety & Accident Prevention Policy.

25. Another requirement that changed on 1/1/13 was the need by the State of NH for a Safety Summary Form. In the past, if you had 10 employees or more, you had to have a written Safety & Health program and file a Safety Summary form every other year. The new law states that if you have 15 employees or more, you must have a written Safety & Health program, must file one Safety Summary form, update the written program at least every other year, and establish a JLMC. Employers who have not filed a Safety Summary Form since 2010 or who have never filed before are subject to the requirements of the revised law.

26. In reviewing the Free Poster checklist in your packet, you can easily review the posters in your office, looking for the applicable dates. If your posters are not the most recent ones, please don’t hesitate to ask me to send you the e-versions or hard copies. Please note that this OSHA poster was just changed in April 2015 and has a significant change. The regulation now requires a call to OSHA within 24 hours if any employee is hospitalized. In the past, it was 3 or more employees hospitalized because of the same incident, or a fatality, or the loss of a limb. The new requirement now includes reporting the loss of an eye.

27. There is both a Federal Minimum Wage & State Minimum Wage
There is both a Federal Minimum Wage & State Minimum Wage. There are also State & Federal Child Labor laws. If you employ anyone under the age of 18, make sure you know those laws intimately. Fines start at $11,000 per violation of the Child Labor laws.

28. Most private employers (that’s us) don’t have the right to ask people to take lie detector tests and this poster tells them that.

29. We don’t discriminate against anyone for any reason at any time.

30. And they’ve added an extra page to add genetics to the mix.

31. This poster defines re-employment rights for our Veterans
This poster defines re-employment rights for our Veterans. This became effective after our veterans coming home from the Gulf War didn’t have jobs to come home to.
I didn’t add pictures of the Notice 797 as that refers to the earned income tax credit. Not required for posting but good to let your folks know about.
The Combustible Dust poster is only necessary if your company processes materials in powdered form. You then not only have to put up the poster, but you have to have a program as well.

32. NH minimum wage matches the Federal minium wage and they also specify some of their youth employment laws in this poster.

33. If this poster isn’t marked with your specific payday, you are not in compliance. First section says that if you pay less than weekly, you must have written permission from the state to do so. (At least, in NH, that’s the law). This is the poster that tells you that you need to notify your employees in writing about their rate of hire, benefits, hours, benefits, etc. Later in this presentation, I’ll show you a form that can be used as a template. Remember, these posters are the Dick & Jane regulations that all businesses need to know. Make sure you read these posters before you put them up.

34. This poster educates your employees about their unemployment rights
This poster educates your employees about their unemployment rights. Let the unemployment office deal with them and their details.

35. Remember the employee who dropped the dime on you to OSHA
Remember the employee who dropped the dime on you to OSHA? Well, you can’t retaliate against him for doing so. The change to this regulation is that now public employees (in other words, those who work for the State or government) can also now make whistleblowers complaints.

36. This is the one poster that we can’t provide to you
This is the one poster that we can’t provide to you. You must get this from your Worker’s Compensation insurance carrier. You will probably find it in the thick pile of papers in your insurance folder. You post this so that your employees can call your Worker’s Comp carrier directly if they want to. It also defines the requirements of your Temporary/Alternative Duty program.

37. If you have more than 5 employees, and operate in NH, you also must have a Temporary/Alternative Transitional Duty Program for employees who become injured at work. These were known as Light Duty Programs. When we customize handbooks, we strive for black & white & everyone understanding the same thing. With this policy, we keep it ambiguous so that we can customize our light duty work based on each individual’s situation.

38. Here is another poster that requires a specific person’s name on it
Here is another poster that requires a specific person’s name on it. Without that name, this poster is not putting a company into compliance by it’s existence.

39. Again, we don’t discriminate against anyone at any time.

40. This criteria has changed a few times in the last decade in NH
This criteria has changed a few times in the last decade in NH. If you are issuing W-9s at the end of the year, make sure those people meet the criteria to be an independent contractor. If they don’t meet ALL of the defined criteria, they will be considered an employee, especially if they get hurt on the job and then, let the fines begin. There was a special task force in NH that was dealing with this specific issue because there has been such an abuse.

41. This poster is only required by those folks in the healthcare industries. However, we supply it because it is the right thing to do for all employees. You can post it on the inside of the bathroom door.

42. If you have employees who pay rent instead of mortgages, then you need to post this as well.

43. If your company “shuts down” for the week between Christmas & New Year’s or has a summer shutdown, then you need to post this so that your employees know they might be eligible for unemployment insurance.

44. New poster from last December reiterates equal pay for equal work that the Federal Government has tried to regulate for years. The other interesting item on this poster is that you can no longer ask your employees not to share their rate of pay with their co-workers. This had been found to undermine union activities, so it is no longer allowed.

45. One main topic in the Human Resource field is job identification forms, otherwise known as job descriptions. All of your forms should include an essential function that is defined as whatever else needs doing to enhance the overall operation or as requested by management. This helps reduce the “It’s not my job” conversations. You also use this form to identify not only the essential functions of the job, but also the motor skills required. Remember, you can’t ask applicants questions about their medical history & background, but you can show them this form and ask them if they see any difficulties performing the essential functions.

46. Since we cannot ask question #5 before the employee starts work, it is very important to ask the question on day #1 as part of the New Hire Orientation. Question #5 reads: “I can perform the essential functions of this job with or without reasonable accommodations.”
If the employee indicates they need accommodations, you need to have them define clearly what those accommodations are.

47. This form replaces the Second Injury Fund form which was declared to be discriminatory by the Human Rights commission. Now, in order to have access to the 2nd Injury fund, you must capture this pre-existing information on an informal and anecdotal basis. For example, if Jill says to you during her smoke break that she blew out her right knee playing field hockey in college, a note should be made to that effect and placed in Jill’s file.

48. You can always go to the irs. gov website to get the latest W-4 form
You can always go to the irs.gov website to get the latest W-4 form. You don’t have to have employees complete it unless their status changes.

49. Remember the Protective Legislation Law poster that says an employer must notify employees in writing when hiring of the rate of pay? This is a great form for this purpose and can also be used when you give your employees raises. Remember, you must notify them in advance of their paycheck when there is a change made.

50. Name
I-9
W-4
Job Id
Rate of Pay form
Request to waive lunch
Confidential agreement
Video acknowledgement
Handbook acknowledgement
New Hire checklist
Training checklist(s)
Census for Employee Files. I included this in your packet as an easy way for you to audit your employee files. You may have additional topics & headings, depending on your industry. An audit is a way to determine if all of the documents required by State & Federal law are on file for all of your employees.

51. The revised I-9 form was protected against copying, but you can download it from the website. You also need to be in close contact with your insurance broker about the employer requirements associated with the new Health Care Reform Act. These requirements have been moving targets, but your broker should know the latest details.

52. ANY FINAL QUESTIONS? Paula Mathews HR Compliance 101, LLC
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