Harness is making compliance with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)'s emergency temporary standard (ETS) easier for contractors through the addition of several new features to its safety management platform.

OSHA has issued an ETS to minimize the risk of COVID-19 transmission in the workplace. The ETS establishes binding requirements to protect unvaccinated employees of large employers (100 or more employees) from the risk of contracting COVID-19 in the workplace.

There are pending legal challenges to the ETS via the U.S. Supreme Court but employers are strongly encouraged to begin complying immediately, as a favorable ruling is not assured. Should the ETS remain in place, employers must comply with all provisions by Feb. 9.  

Employers face steep fines for non-compliance and may also have issues due to changing workplace conditions on existing jobs. Employers may also find winning new bids becomes difficult if they are not in compliance with the ETS. 

The ETS calls for employers with 100 or more employees to create a vaccine policy that requires workers to either be vaccinated or undergo regular COVID testing. Additionally, employers need to keep track of the vaccination status of their employees.

Harness has developed several new features to help contractors, including:

• New toolbox talks and training lessons to help supervisors and regular field workers understand the ETS and to help employers meet the educational aspects of the standard.
• A form to collect workers’ vaccination status. The status is stored on the worker’s profile. Administrators can view, update and share the worker vaccination roster easily.
• A form used to document weekly test results for unvaccinated workers. Workers can upload their own results or they can be uploaded by a Harness administrator.
• Weekly text and email reminders for unvaccinated workers that they must submit their test results or provide them to a company representative. 

Additionally, Harness will provide its clients with templates for a COVID-19 vaccination and testing policy as well as copies of all relevant OSHA ETS materials within the app so they can be reviewed anytime, anywhere, on any device.

The features are available immediately as a paid add-on for existing Harness clients. Companies that don’t currently use Harness can purchase the ETS-related features via a special promotional plan.

Harness is holding a webinar about the new features at 1 p.m. on Jan. 7. Click here to register. Companies interested in these or any other features of the Harness Safety Management Platform can visit harnessup.com/osha-ets.