Workers who have been involved in a workplace accident may not know where to begin when it comes to protecting their own safety in the future. A good place to start is by contacting the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, otherwise known as OSHA, which can launch preventative investigations at your work.
As stated by the United States Department of Labor, an OSHA investigation for accidents in the workplace does not currently have any specific standards that need to be met. This means that in order to have an OSHA inspection done at a place of work, the only requirement is for an employee or an employee representative to file a safety complaint with OSHA. They will see to a wide variety of workplace accidents. Some of the accident types that can be investigated include accidents involving:
- Faulty equipment
- Faulty or failed supplies
- Damage done due to the surrounding that the work had taken place in
- Failure on the part of other people
Investigations that are carried out by OSHA aim not only to determine why an accident was caused, but to determine what particular failure caused that accident to happen. By assessing the situation and finding exactly what went wrong, preventative measures can be taken in the future to keep any similar accidents from happening in that place of work.
While this will not take care of the legal side of the matter, it can allow workers to feel safer in their working environments even after an accident has taken place. Investigations can also be used to bolster legal arguments later.