OSHA updates staff guidance on communicating with families after a worker death

Washington — OSHA has updated its internal guidance on communicating with the families of workers killed on the job. 

In effect since Aug. 26, the instructional directive details how the agency can ensure it “communicates its fatality inspection procedures to the fallen worker’s family and facilitates the exchange of information throughout the entire inspection process and settlement or final order of any citation(s) issued.”

Among the changes:

• Updates to multiple definitions, including “next of kin,” as well as the addition of terms such as “national family liaison” and “OSHA representative”
• Ways to identify and the general order of next of kin
• The number of phases of interaction and guidance on how to determine next of kin
• The initial communication order
• Follow-up communications
• Post-inspection communications
• Final order/closing communication phase added to the interaction and communication order with next of kin
• Communication with the national family liaison

“Historically, OSHA has communicated with surviving family members both to express sympathy, to gather information about the deceased, and to explain OSHA’s role and process,” the directive states. “This instruction guides the communication with next of kin to ensure they are treated with the utmost respect.”