This is Jason Cavness with cavnessHR. At cavnessHR, we deliver HR to companies with 49 or fewer people by automating the entire HR process and providing a great User Experience

For this week's HR topic, we're going to talk about the Employee Right to Know Laws or Hazardous Chemicals in the Workplace. This is a rule that requires private sector employers with hazardous substances in their workplace to develop a comprehensive hazard communication program to train and inform their employees. This is run through OSHA. OSHA's hazard communications standard is based on a simple concept. That employees have both a need and a right to know the hazardous identities of the chemicals that they are exposed to when working, which of course makes common sense.

Your employees also need to know what protective measures are available to prevent adverse effects from occurring. This program is designed to provide employees with the information they need to know.

The rule, if you're using chemicals in your workplace, is you need to provide this to your employees. The standard for this requires a list of the hazardous chemicals in the workplace as a part of your hazard communication program. This list is eventually going to serve as the inventory for everything you must maintain under the SDS or Safety Data Sheet. So it's important that you implement this program and also it's important to realize that this is not a one-shot deal. You just can't communicate it one time and then never come back. This is going to be a continual process almost like a living document for you and your employees.

So let's talk about material safety data sheets. Or I believe they're actually just called safety data sheets now, SDS. Chemical manufacturers and importers are required to obtain or develop a safety data sheet for each hazardous chemical they produce or import. So if you have hazardous chemical in your place of business, the company that made it should provide you a safety data sheet. So when you receive the chemical from your inventory, the company should also provide a safety data sheet for you. The safety data sheet is going to provide items like what makes up the chemical and if somebody gets the chemical on their body or something like that, the precautionary measures to take place.

For employers using hazardous chemicals, the most important aspect of the program in terms of the SDS is you have to ensure that someone is responsible for obtaining and maintaining these documents for every single hazardous chemical in the workplace. The list of hazardous chemicals required to be obtained as part of the program should serve as the inventory. Now most companies have a safety person doing this. I know a lot of small businesses don't have a safety person per se, and they do it themselves. At cavnessHR, we don't do safety, but we do have some people we can reach out to you and connect you with if you need a safety person or need an audit of your safety program.

Thank you for your time as usual and remember to be great every day.

If you have any HR questions, reach out to me at jasoncavness@cavnesshr.com.