2.4 The annual cycle: certify, post, submit, retain

1 The four duties of 1904.32(a)

At the end of each calendar year, 1904.32(a) requires four things, in order: review the 300 Log to verify the entries are complete and accurate and correct any deficiencies; create an annual summary of the cases recorded; certify the summary; and post it.

The review is not a formality. 1904.32(b)(1) says to review the entries “as extensively as necessary to make sure that they are complete and correct” — which in practice means re-reading every case against the classification rules, checking that day counts were closed out, and hunting the cases that never reached the log at all. December is when a case that was “going to be first aid” in August gets re-examined.

2 Building the 300A

1904.32(b)(2) sets out what goes on the summary: total the columns of the 300 Log — and if you had no recordable cases, enter zeros for each column total — then enter the calendar year covered, the company name, the establishment name and address, the annual average number of employees covered by the log, and the total hours worked by all employees covered by the log.

Those last two are the ones that get invented. The forms package includes a worksheet for exactly this purpose: a method for figuring the annual average number of employees and the total hours worked. Use it, keep it, and write down where the hours came from — payroll export, job cost system, an estimate and its basis. Part 3 explains why this is the number that quietly breaks most rate comparisons.

If you are using an equivalent form rather than the OSHA 300A, 1904.32(b)(2)(iii) adds a condition: your summary must also include the employee access and employer penalty statements that appear on the OSHA form.

3 Certification: four people, one sentence

1904.32(b)(3) requires a company executive to certify that he or she has examined the 300 Log and reasonably believes, based on knowledge of the process by which the information was recorded, that the annual summary is correct and complete.

And (b)(4) says who counts as a company executive. There are exactly four options:

• An owner of the company — only if it is a sole proprietorship or a partnership.
• An officer of the corporation.
• The highest ranking company official working at the establishment.
• The immediate supervisor of the highest ranking company official working at the establishment.

4 Posting: where, and for three months

1904.32(b)(5) and (b)(6) set the rest. Post a copy of the annual summary in each establishment, in a conspicuous place or places where notices to employees are customarily posted. Make sure the posted summary is not altered, defaced or covered by other material. Post it no later than February 1 of the year following the year covered, and keep it in place until April 30.

Three months is a long time for a piece of paper on a board, and the “not covered by other material” clause exists because it routinely ends up behind a shift schedule by the middle of February. Put it where people stand still — the time clock, the break room door, the gate — rather than where there happens to be a spare board.

5 Electronic submission, and the March 2 date

1904.41 adds a separate duty for three categories of establishment, and it is a duty to submit, not merely to keep:

The deadline for all of them is March 2 of the year after the calendar year covered — 1904.41(c). An establishment outside the three categories submits only if OSHA notifies it in writing for an individual data collection, under 1904.41(b)(1).

What OSHA does with the data matters to you: its Site-Specific Targeting plan builds general industry inspection lists from it, selecting on high DART rates, upward-trending rates, implausibly low rates and non-responders. Being in the third category — 100 or more employees in a designated industry — means your case-level narratives go to OSHA too.

6 Five years, and the duty to keep updating

1904.33(a) sets the retention period: the 300 Log, the privacy case list if you have one, the annual summary and the 301 Incident Reports are saved for five years following the end of the calendar year the records cover.

And 1904.33(b)(1) adds the part that catches people out: during that storage period you must keep the stored logs updated with newly discovered recordable cases, and with any change in the classification of a case already recorded — removing or lining out the original entry and writing the new information. The summary and the 301s need not be updated, though you may.

So a 2024 log is not finished in February 2025. If a 2024 case is reclassified in 2027, the 2024 log is corrected in 2027. Build a calendar reminder rather than relying on memory, and keep the old summaries even though they are not revised — they are the evidence of what you certified at the time.