What types of businesses need to be OSHA compliant?

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, is an agency of the federal government that is dedicated to making sure employers in the United States are safe. They are best known for making regulations designed to ensure employees are safe at work, but they do much more than that as well. Just about all employers are going to need to be OSHA compliant in one way or another. One of the only exceptions to that is state and local government workers as they do not fall under the authority of OSHA. In most cases, however, there will be state and local regulations in place to provide them with the same or similar protections.

Exceptions to OSHA Regulations

While the vast majority of employers do need to be OSHA compliant, they don’t all have the same rules that need to be followed. For example, employers who have ten or fewer employees are exempt from most types of reporting requirements that larger employers need to follow. This is to help make sure small businesses aren’t unnecessarily burdened with potentially costly and time-consuming reporting requirements.

Of course, some regulations may be technically required, but never applicable for certain businesses. For example, any regulations from OSHA concerning handling toxic chemicals will be in place for an employer that runs an office environment, but it won’t be audited. Since the employer never uses toxic chemicals, they won’t need to worry about this type of regulation. Of course, ignorance of a regulation does not mean they are exempt. If they do happen to have toxic chemicals, they need to follow the OSHA regulations.

Working with OSHA

OSHA issues thousands of regulations that need to be followed by any company in the United States. Many companies outside of the US also follow these standards if they are doing business with a US-based company. OSHA does not simply issue new regulations and then leaves employers to follow them, however. They offer a lot of training and other helpful resources to assist employers in remaining compliant at all times.