I never thought it would happen but it appears the Occupational Safety and Health Administration will experience significant regulatory reductions. Pinch me. Pinch yourself. It’s not a dream. Instead of keeping up with the latest from OSHA to see what new regulations have been added; we will be constantly checking to see which have been eliminated.

  We should see changes in most standards, including bloodborne pathogen, formaldehyde, and hazard communication. In addition, the OSHA focus on small businesses will be to offer help. OSHA will focus primarily on heavy industry and manufacturing. This is the way it was when the agency was formed in 1969. Like other bureaucracies, it has continued to expand.

  It reached the point that a few funeral homes were issued fines north of $50K. This was not due to these firms having a high accident and injury rate. In most cases, their workplace was not dangerous to the employees. The common trait these firms had was poor compliance, either in the written plans or in their lack of executing what was in those plans. In some cases, the firms made it worse by lying to OSHA about corrections they had made. That is always a major mistake. Hopefully, this Trump neutered version of OSHA will leave business services alone.

  This does not end compliance but it does put the bullseye on industries that have the highest accident and injury rates. Funeral homes traditionally have some of the lowest. The service industry includes real estate, banking and finance, insurance agencies and yes, funeral homes. Why OSHA ever had even going here was suspect in my book. 

  Going forward, it will be important to keep up with any regulatory reductions as they happen so you can update those changes in your written programs. If you fail to do that; you will not gain the changes. While OSHA may no longer require something, your obsolete written program will. As always, businesses must follow whatever policies are in their written programs. Your regulatory consultant should make changes in those written plans whenever it is warranted.

  Other than that, you will still need to do annual training and documentation. You still need to do initial employee training, not just in the basics but in areas like slip, trip, and fall and ladder safety. If you are working with a consultant, this requires no more than showing a ten-minute PowerPoint, then having the new employee sign off on it. OSHA is still around, but you are going to like the OSHA of the future a lot more than the OSHA of the past.