Introduction
In March 2026, the Department of Labor launched the new OSHA Safety Champions Program. This voluntary initiative aims to help employers develop and strengthen their safety and health programs. It provides health and safety professionals with a defined progression that takes them from early alignment to fully implemented controls, along with performance review and continuous improvement.
What Is OSHA’s Safety Champions Program?
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has created a voluntary program that helps employers improve safety and health at their worksites. It provides guidance and resources for employers to build or improve programs for their operations with the goal of reducing injuries, illnesses, fatalities, and operational gaps.
The program is built around OSHA’s Recommended Practices for Safety and Health Programs. It communicates the core elements of this guidance in a way that is more practical and impactful for small and medium-sized enterprises that may not have significant H&S teams. Through the program, employers can implement an effective operating model for their business, allowing them to identify hazards, control risk, document progress, and improve safety culture over time.
Who Can Participate in the Program?
The program is open to both private- and public-sector worksites covered by OSHA. Enrollment is on a site-by-site basis, ensuring that organizations with multiple sites have the location-level implementation, verification, and improvement to address actual worksite conditions. Employers of any size can enroll, with particular support for small and medium-sized worksites.
There is no cost for this program, which is offered by OSHA free of charge. To get started, an employer can sign up on OSHA’s website to register a worksite. From there, at least one employee at that worksite must complete the orientation training. This is required before a worksite can move from the introductory step to the intermediate step.
How the OSHA Safety Champions Program Works
The program has three progressive steps: Introductory, Intermediate, and Advanced. These self-guided stages allow participants to work through them at their own pace. Worksites can request assistance from OSHA’s Special Government Employee (SGE) Program to assess their written safety and health program.
The introductory step guides employers to align their safety and health practices with OSHA’s recommended practices. The intermediate step focuses on implementation. The advanced step provides further guidance for employers to assess and improve their programs over time.
Employers document their progress through the OSHA Safety Champions Tracker, which contains a list of categories and individual tasks involved in each step. As employers carry out these specific tasks, they record their actions. They can then request SGE review to ensure that their actions have sufficiently addressed that task.
The Core Elements of a Strong Worksite Safety Program
The Safety Champions Program defines seven elements across which employers can build, assess, and improve their safety and health programs. Breaking down broader goals into actionable and measurable areas helps teams improve planning, implementation, training, coordination, and review.
Management Leadership
Effective leadership requires commitment, resources, and accountability. This element includes tasks such as estimating and committing resources for program implementation and maintenance, assigning ownership of key areas, and creating effective performance review processes.
Worker Participation
Ensuring that workers participate is essential for any safety and health program. Key areas of focus include establishing baseline worker surveys, clear communication of rights, encouraging employees to report hazards and near misses, and involving workers in important tasks like inspections, audits, and hazard evaluation.
Hazard Identification and Assessment
Identifying hazards keeps workers safe by letting teams address risks before they lead to incidents. Program tasks covering this element include listing workplace hazards, injury and incident investigations, root cause analysis, and corrective action implementation and tracking.
Hazard Prevention and Control
Connecting assessments to practical action is vital to address hazards. OSHA guidance here expects employers to determine controls for identified hazards, make use of interim controls, develop written controls, prioritize hazards, establish action timelines, and establish preventive maintenance schedules.
Education and Training
Employee training is a fundamental component of any safety and health program. OSHA requires employers to develop training plans that include a variety of topics, including worker rights, hazard recognition, appropriate controls, annual refreshers, and job-specific training for supervisors, contractors, temporary workers, and visitors. Participation must also be documented and verifiable.
Program Evaluation and Improvement
Ongoing evaluation and improvement are necessary to ensure that a safety and health program is effective and current. OSHA’s guidance here covers maintaining and reviewing incident and injury records, such as through OSHA 300 logs. Employers must also evaluate data, including worker reports, workers’ comp claims, exposure sampling, performance indicators, and annual safety data trends.
Communication and Coordination
Worksites can include workers and host employers, contractors, and staffing agencies, making communication essential to prevent workplace incidents. That includes areas such as contractor selection procedures, review of safety procedures and training, safety performance in bidding, hazard information exchange, work planning, scheduling, and conflict resolution.
Putting Health and Safety Into Action With ERA
The Safety Champions Program provides detailed guidance for employers to implement practical safety and health practices. However, that implementation also requires the right tools for the job. ERA’s Health & Safety Management Software provides a full suite of capabilities to address the elements and specific tasks of this program.
From building training courses and tracking completion to managing incidents, inspections, audits, and more, you can handle all of your health and safety workflows in one convenient platform. Mobile app access lets your team continue to put safety first, both onsite and offsite, whether carrying out inspection checklists or reporting an incident.
Custom dashboards allow workers in any role to access the information they need, along with providing full visibility for management. You can put an effective safety and health program into action, monitor its progress, and achieve continuous improvement with powerful KPIs and insights.
If you’re working your way through this new OSHA program and are looking for software to put those principles into action, then ERA can help. Schedule a call with one of our project analysts, and we’ll be happy to discuss how our software can meet your unique needs.
Contributing Scientist:
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