Employers have the legal responsibility to ensure the safety of their employees. This means following safety regulations, providing safety training to employees in all necessary areas, and employing enough management or supervisors to verify the safety and welfare of anyone on their site.

Unfortunately, some companies regularly run afoul of safety legislation. For employers that commit repeated offenses, OSHA typically attempts to rehabilitate them by placing them in the Severe Violator Enforcement Program (SVEP) where they will stay for three years. This program highlights the importance of the health and safety of employees and subjects the company to increased inspections to ensure compliance.

An offending employer will be placed on the SVEP when OSHA discovers one of the following:

• They are cited with wilful or repeat violations or fail to abate notices that relate to an employee’s death or the hospitalization of three or more employees.
• Two or more wilful or repeat violations or fail to abate notices based on serious violations that relate to a “high-emphasis hazard”.
• Three or more wilful or repeat violations or fail to abate notices based on serious violations that relate to potentially releasing a highly hazardous chemical.
• All egregious (per-instance citations) actions.

Employers that are placed in the program can get themselves removed from SVEP by taking several steps, including paying all fines and penalties, addressing the safety concerns that caused them to be placed in SVEP, and avoiding serious violations in the future.

For a more in-depth look at OSHA’s Severe Violator Enforcement Program you can read the agency’s white paper, which provides statistics, a flow chart and more program details.