The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has amended its workplace injury reporting requirements numerous times since Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970. In May 2016, the organization once again revised these regulations, releasing the “Final Rule to Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses,” which required enterprises to keep electronic records detailing all worker injuries sustained on-site and submit this data for public consumption. The new rule, which carried an implementation date of Jan. 1, 2017 and a record submission start date of July 1, 2017, was designed to promote transparency and arm environmental health and safety researchers with the insights they needed to develop actionable, data-backed strategies for reducing worker injuries and fatalities.

In May, OSHA, having come under control of the Trump administration, delayed the rule roll out with intention of conducting more research on the revised regulation to determine its impact on businesses, according to the Society of Human Resource Management. Then, in June, the government agency issued a new compliance deadline, giving businesses until Dec. 1 to submit injury data via the form 300A using the online Injury Tracking Application. Now, that once-distant cut-off date is quickly approaching. Firms that have yet to prepare for the enforcement of the new reporting rule must work quickly to ready their EHS operations. How? Here are two methodologies that enterprises confronting this problem are employing to great success:

Understand the impact

This rule, while wide-reaching, does not apply to every organization. Although it does increase the number of companies that are required by law to submit injury data to the federal government by 450,000, the revised regulation comes with two key conditions, EHS Today reported. The first stipulates that only businesses with 250 or more employees must file the form 300A via ITA. The second expands these basic reporting requirements to enterprises with 20 to 249 workers in more than five dozen industries with historically high employee injury rates, according to OSHA. These sectors include construction, manufacturing and warehousing.

Businesses that do not meet either of these conditions are not required to comply with new injury reporting rule and continue their EHS operations as they are currently constituted. However, those that have extensive employee rosters or function in high-risk injuries are obligated to take action.