Occupational Safety & Health Administration (U.S. Department of Labor)

OSHA's mission is to assure the safety and health of America's workers by setting and enforcing standards; providing training, outreach, and education; establishing partnerships; and encouraging continual improvement in workplace safety and health. Information may be obtained by visiting their web site at www.osha.gov.

Their Services

OSHA and its state partners have approximately 2100 inspectors, plus complaint discrimination investigators, engineers, physicians, educators, standards writers, and other technical and support personnel spread over more than 200 offices throughout the country. This staff establishes protective standards, enforces those standards, and reaches out to employers and employees through technical assistance and consultation programs.

The Public They Serve

Nearly every working man and woman in the nation comes under OSHA's jurisdiction (with some exceptions such as miners, transportation workers, many public employees, and the self-employed). Other users and recipients of OSHA services include: occupational safety and health professionals, the academic community, lawyers, journalists, and personnel of other government entities.

Service Improvement Plan

OSHA is determined to use its limited resources effectively to stimulate management commitment and employee participation in comprehensive workplace safety and health programs.

Surveying Their Public

At OSHA, they are dedicated to improving the quality of their efforts and know that to be successful they must become an agency that is driven by commitment to public service. The first step is for OSHA to listen and respond to its customers. Accordingly, they conducted a survey to learn more about what employers and employees think of OSHA's services.

Because workplace inspections are one of OSHA's principal activities and because voluntary efforts to improve working conditions ultimately depend on strong enforcement, their survey focused primarily on the inspection process. They asked a random sample of employees and employers who had recently experienced an OSHA inspection what they thought of the inspection in particular, and of OSHA's standards and educational and other assistance activities in general.

Service Standards

They based OSHA's new standards for public service on what they learned from the survey, from meetings with employee and employer groups, and from focus group discussions with workers from many plants and industries across the country.

Their public service improvement program will be an ongoing one. They will continue to gather information on the quality of their performance in delivering services in areas not included in their survey, particularly in the construction sector. They plan to learn more about public response to their assistance and consultation programs.