Washington — Two recent compliance assistance initiatives show that OSHA is “looking for ways to lead,” agency administrator David Keeling said this week.
“OSHA has kind of taken a step back, I think, over the last, you know, 15 to 20 years when it comes to the leadership position in the industry,” Keeling said March 23 during a virtual meeting on the “OSHA Cares” initiative and the agency’s Safety Champions Program, among other topics.
“We don’t have to have a regulation to make things better,” he continued. “We don’t have to give a citation to make things better. When it’s appropriate, we’ll certainly do that.
“We want to be in the abatement business. We want to be in the solutions business. We don’t necessarily want to only be in the enforcement business. We want to fix the issue, and that includes coming at problems or coming at issues from many different directions, not just one.”
Keeling stressed that the Safety Champions Program is one way, especially for small and medium-sized organizations, to “link into” OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Programs.
The initiative is a way for organizations that “haven’t had the resources to commit to a full VPP program.”
The “OSHA Cares” initiative, meanwhile, is “a little bit of a broader approach, so the intent here is to improve our communication and improve our coordination with all agencies and all employers and all employee work groups.”
Keeling added that 12 State Plans have shown interest in developing their own versions of the initiatives.
‘OSHA Cares’ poster
The recent release of an updated version of the agency’s poster informing workers of their rights under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, as part of the “OSHA Cares” initiative, stemmed, in part, from feedback from OSHA investigators.
“They said, ‘Look, the posters, they’re overburdened. They’re hard to read. They read like a law book. Can we make something simpler?’” Keeling said.
He noted that the addition of a QR code was a way for employees to get additional information in a “way that they communicate every day.”
He added: “Very few employees don’t have cellphones. We need to communicate in a way that’s a little more modern, a little more up to date.”
OSHA is hiring
Keeling said the agency has received more than 1,000 applications for its current 108 job openings – and added that a second wave of job postings is forthcoming for those “with a little more technical expertise,” such as safety engineers and industrial hygienists.
A Department of Labor Office of Inspector General report released in January notes that OSHA has seen a decrease in its federal inspector corps to 736 as of June 2025, from 846 in February 2024.
OSHA has scheduled a virtual job fair for 2 p.m. Eastern on April 2.
