Your Rights in an OSHA Inspection


A workplace inspection by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) can result in substantial penalties where violations are found. Employers need to know their rights during an inspection, including the right to say "no" to an OSHA compli- ance officer (inspector) when he or she seeks to inspect a work place. The protocols to be followed by your company need to be established and understood by supervisory as well as non-supervisory employees ahead of time, and reinforced from time to time. All supervisory employees should be well-versed in the company’s OSHA access policy and must have familiarity with OSHA regula- tions and the company’s programs for compliance. Non-supervisory employees should understand that they have no right to grant OSHA access and should refer any such attempt to management. They also should be briefed on their rights if interviewed by OSHA in the course of an inspection. With proper planning the company can exert reasonable control over an OSHA inspection, and where violations are found can preserve necessary evidence for later use in litigation or in negotiation of a settlement.


Read More Practice Makes Perfect


Practicing is all about rehearsing again and again until you have mastered the role you’ve been assigned; but it is also about improv- ing your behavior. According to Andy Osborne, MBCI, Associate Consultant at Clearview-Continuity, if you want a return on your BCP (Business Continuity Plan) investment, then you need to make sure it works. Simply having a BCP in place will not save your business; what will save it is having the right people with the right capability to deliver that plan, and the only way to develop that capability is through practicing or


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Zero Tolerance and the Use of Common Sense By Robert D. Sollars


When we start discussing zero tolerance, the expectation is that whatever you’re talking about is not going to be allowed – no matter what. That means no exceptions, no deviation, and literally no tolerance for the action created from prescribed policy and procedure correct? In normal terms yes it does. But I have to remind you that the world is full of gray, it’s not as simple as black and white any more.


Anyone who has been around in the business world for a long time will know what I’m talking about. Yes the policy does say that, for example, that anyone caught making a threat is to be suspended immediately and an investigation started, and possibly even the police called in to arrest the person. Normally this would be a good idea for most all things, right?


But a threat is only a threats when it’s said with malice. If 2 friends are walking out the door together, laughing and joking, and one says to the other ‘You SOB, I’m gonna kick your ever lovin a** when I get you into the parking lot!’ The way they say it will indicate whether it’s a good natured jibe or whether it’s something to worry about. If one employee is waggling his finger at another, with an angry scowl on their face, and says ‘I’m kick your SOB f****** a** when we get to the parking lot!’ I’d be much more worried than I would be at the first phrase. On the front of it, if you take your policy and procedure manual seriously (and you should but with a grain of salt we’ll talk about in a minute), both of those phrases are grounds for suspension, arrest, and termination at the very least! They even can be the cause for lawsuits as well.


A zero tolerance policy has to be, by nature, be tempered by common sense. If it’s not, then you could be treading on legally a ‘slippery slope’, when it comes to disciplinary action. Whether it be in a mediation, arbitration, or a court of law. Even those venues can be tempered with common sense once in a while, so do you want to twirl the wheel of fortune?


Utilizing common sense in your disciplinary actions and judging every single action and incident as an individual one may be time consuming and not necessarily the best use of your time. And it can be both of those, not to mention the expenditure of money in them as well. But in this world of overly litigious employees, for both good and bad reasons, and their attorneys, you have to make individual determinations, and sometimes that means you can’t follow the policy or procedure verbatim!


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