By Ruth Kiefer, Vice President of Loss Control

MIOSHA is back out in the field with a seemly whole new crew of enforcement officers and they are knocking on lots of policyholder doors. After a few years off due to Covid, it is now necessary that you put safety back into the forefront of your businesses. It is very important that you take this time to dust off your safety programs and review your programs and when the last time your employee’s were trained. You need to ensure that your safety training is up-todate or determine if you are missing some programs due to new equipment installed or change of staffing.

You can find all the necessary safety programs on our portal. These safety programs are fill-in-the-blank templates that help you satisfy the written program requirements for MIOSHA. Also on the portal is everything you need for your safety training requirements as well, with well over 700 videos you’ll definitely find what your looking for. If you need to narrow the scope of your training needs, reach out to your MTM loss control person so they can direct you to the right video or written program.

Once the inspector has reviewed your safety programs, they will be moving on to your production floor. Some of the hot buttons will be guarding of your equipment, whether it be an abrasive wheel, a band saw, drill press, brake press, to plastic injection machines. Guarding is a major component of their inspections. The other is equipment inspections, are you conducting regular inspections on your equipment? This equipment entails, industrial trucks, cranes, hydraulic presses, mechanical presses and any other equipment that you have should be inspected to ensure that the equipment has the proper safeguards, is in good condition, and properly adjusted.

The other hot button item we have noticed is the electronic reporting of occupational injuries. We remind our policyholders every year of this requirement, so none of you should be getting this violation. So please, please, please, upload your annual electronic submission of your MIOSHA form 300A if you have between 20-250 employees and are in a high hazard industry (which most of you are). This must be done no later than March 2nd, of EVERY year. This fine alone has ranged from $300- $1400. The window is closed for this year and will not reopen until January 1. We will remind you when the time comes around for next year.

Please update your contact information with our Marketing department if you need a reminder email to go to the right person. We promise to keep you up to date with this reminder we send out every year along with anything else that affects you in the realm of safety and MIOSHA. It is important to keep this information updated so we can inform you or your designated representative of any important changes that affect your business.

If you want to have your loss control representative come out and review your safety programs or inspect your production floor for the common MIOSHA violations, please contact us so that we can get you squared away.