I see it all the time. For whatever reason, OSHA is at the door unannounced – to start a random inspection, investigate a safety complaint, to begin an investigation – and everyone from the plant manager to the safety department starts to sweat. Department phones are ringing, radio chatter escalates, the entire site is ablaze with scurrying activity to sweep, clean, hide, find, review, warn, and inform employees to “do it right, the OSHA inspector is here.”
If that describes you and your site, what do you think are your odds of coming out of this “clean?” With years of experience working to help employers either avoid this scene or to recover from this scene, I would say it is not good.