Is "NOSHA" a blessing, a curse, or an omen?

The New Balance of Worksite Safety

Safety is a balance between precaution and results – and the scales are tipping.    

For decades, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has shaped what is considered acceptable worksite safety across workplaces of all types.  

Now, proposals to dismantle OSHA, slash budgets and reduced federal oversight beg questions like:

• Who will be responsible for safe work practices in OSHA's absence?

• How should businesses navigate such an uncertain liability landscape?

• Would “NOSHA” improve or harm actual worksite safety?

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The Current Landscape of Safety  

Let's press mute on the news headlines for a second, and looking at the data, there are a few unsettling trends in safety:  

1. Across industries for the last decade, workplace injuries and fatalities have plateaued—or, in some cases, even increased. For instance, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the construction industry alone reports more than a thousand worker fatalities each year, often due to preventable hazards linked to inadequate training, planning, documentation, and supervision – and these figures haven’t changed much in years.

2. Meanwhile, government funding for OSHA has steadily risen over the years, going from around $552 million in 2017 to over $632 million in 2023, according to U.S. Department of Labor data, still far below the proposed $738 million for FY2024 by president Biden, which was rejected by the House. Many question if these increases have driven improvements in workplace safety outcomes, or if we are at the point of diminishing returns? Claims of OSHA’s inefficiency and counter-productive role to small businesses with undue compliance burdens are not new.  

3. All the while, demand for safety expertise is growing 5% a year, indefinitely, with many experts warning of a looming skills gap as the demand outpaces supply, driven by an aging workforce and increasing corporate accountability. Yet many safety teams are bogged down by manual paperwork, which overshadows more critical tasks like on-site monitoring and workforce training.

The combination of shrinking influence from government and deficit of safety expertise present a big problem for employers.

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A Shifting Landscape

If OSHA were dismantled... Would the scramble to establish state-wide replacements risk gaps and imperfect policies? How quickly could they establish enforcement bodies? Would insurance providers step up? Where do businesses turn for any sense of safety?

U.S. Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona has introduced a new bill aimed at abolishing OSHA. The propsed bill, "Nullify Occupational Safety and Health Administration Act," or NOSHA, argues that a one-size-fits-all approach to safety is impractical, and that states should decide what makes sense for them - not the federal government. But some states rely on the federal government for safety policy (*see below). If standards don’t align with specific regional needs—unique processes, climates, or cultures—they may lose credibility with employers... leaving workers vulnerable.

For example, Arizona's hot climate creates conditions that are technically unsafe according to OSHA, but unavoidable & impractical to mitigate in the Grand Canyon state.

If industry consensus shifts toward a more tailored safety approach, but there isn't a mature alternative and safety expertise is scarce (ie. expensive) - how can employers protect their workers and their business more practically?  

Whether you favor a centralized OSHA or state-led models, a system that works from top to bottom across government agencies, employers, and workers to foster real prevention, protection and accountability is needed.

* Below are the states that rely solely on OSHA - if you see yours, read on. And you can find more information here.

1. Alabama, AL
2. Arkansas, AR
3. Colorado, CO
4. Delaware, DE
5. Florida, FL
6. Georgia, GA
7. Idaho, ID
8. Kansas, KA
9. Louisiana, LA
10. Mississippi, MS
11. Missouri, MO
12. Montana, MT
13. Nebraska, NE
14. New Hampshire, NH
15. North Dakota, ND
16. Ohio, OH
17. Oklahoma, OK
18. Pennsylvania, PA
19. Rhode Island, RI
20. South Dakota, SD
21. Texas, TX
22. West Virginia, WV
23. Wisconsin, WI

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The Emerging Role of AI in Safety  

For years, digital safety platforms have primarily focused on digitizing paperwork—housing documents, forms, and certificates in a virtual file system. While this marked a step forward from paper binders and filing cabinets, many of these solutions remain non-intuitive and limited in value. They often lack the functionality that safety professionals truly need in the field.

Fortunately, that’s beginning to change. New, AI-driven tools—like SiteCheck—are trained on a comprehensive set of regulations, codes, and guidelines from both Canada and the United States. SiteCheck’s AI Safety Assistant can apply this expertise to your company's specific situation to give instant, tailored, and automatically documented safety guidance. Not only is SiteCheck’s AI trained on the entirety of OSHA, but it can also use your company’s unique safety processes or templates, as well as site-specific details or files, to offer tangible advice tailored to actual conditions on the ground.  

SiteCheck automates away compliance paperwork so people can focus on more valuable work, helping to evolve your businesses safety culture in key ways:  

1. Fortifying compliance: Ensuring all necessary activities are completed – even when operating in a grey zone. Automated documentation of AI safety research and planning are evidence that your business is taking the right steps, comply with the good spirit of OSHA, the general duty clause, section 5(a)(1). ‍
2. Streamlining compliance: AI can automate paperwork, from site inspections to corrective action to toolbox meetings, to reduce the burden of compliance, while retaining safety expertise permantently.

3. Humanizing compliance: By automating routine paperwork, safety leaders can invest more time in hands-on activities—like training employees and identifying field hazards—rather than sifting through administrative tasks. AI can empower people can focus on what truly matters: preventing incidents before they happen.

As safety leaders will say, safety is about fostering the right team culture with leadership, it's not about paperwork or red tape.

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Safeguarding Your Business  

In a labor market where the burden of proof of safety may increasingly be fall on employers, while the definitions of what is "safe" is growing more and more debatable, SiteCheck gives construction businesses peace of mind.

Whether we keep OSHA or go NOSHA, the path forward in worksite safety is becoming clear: data-driven, proactive, and supported by cutting-edge technology. It’s time to embrace tools that free up your team’s energy to focus on what really counts.

Curious how to future-proof your worksite safety? Try our AI safety assistant, risk- free with zero commitments, or book a demo call for a more human introduction.