Governor Ige recently approved new administrative rules for the State of Hawaii Department of Occupational Safety and Health (“HIOSH”).  Beginning August 18, 2018, one component of the new rules requires companies who have ten or more employees to develop a written safety and health program that satisfies HIOSH/OSHA requirements.  Under the previous rules, such written programs were required only for companies with 25 or more employees. 

Specifically, under general HIOSH standards, a company is now exempt from being required to have a written safety and health program only if they have less than 10 employees.  Otherwise, all other companies must adopt a written safety and health program that complies with HIOSH/OSHA requirements. 

Similarly, for construction standards under HIOSH, a company is exempt from being required to have a written safety and health program only if (1) they have less than 10 employees and (2) do not have a contract with the state in excess of $100,000.  Both requirements must be met for the exemption to apply. 

Under these new rules, many companies with 10-24 employees will now need to adopt a written safety and health program, if they haven’t already done so.   As noted above, the deadline to have the new program in place was August 18, 2018.

To assist companies with developing written safety and health programs, HIOSH has made two sample written safety and health programs available to the public.  They can be viewed at the following links:

• Safety and Health Program Sample 1 (Beyond Minimum Standards)
• Safety and Health Program Sample 2 (Minimum Standards)

If you have any further questions regarding these new administrative rules, you can call the HIOSH consultation and training branch at 808-586-9100.