Last updated 2026-07-09
TL;DR
OSHA incident reporting means two things: recording injuries on Form 300/301 (ongoing, year-round) and calling OSHA to report certain severe incidents within 8 to 24 hours. Employers with 10 or more employees in most industries must keep records. Fatalities and hospitalizations trigger a phone call. Penalties for missing deadlines run up to $16,131 per violation as of 2024.
What is an OSHA incident report?
An OSHA incident report is the paperwork, and sometimes a phone call, that documents a work-related injury or illness under 29 CFR Part 1904 [1]. The term covers two obligations that people mash together. First is recordkeeping: logging injuries and illnesses on OSHA Form 300 (the Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses) and Form 301 (the Injury and Illness Incident Report). Second is reporting: calling OSHA directly after certain severe events, no matter your company's size or industry.
People use "incident report" loosely to mean any internal accident form. That's fine for your own files. But OSHA's forms are specific documents with specific fields, and filling them out wrong or late carries real penalties. This article sticks to the official OSHA forms and the reporting calls, because that's where employers get burned.
If you want the broader idea of how to document any workplace incident for your own records, see our guide on incident report.
Who is required to file OSHA incident reports?
The recordkeeping rule, 29 CFR 1904.1, exempts any employer with 10 or fewer employees at all times during the previous calendar year [1]. It also exempts employers in certain low-hazard industries regardless of size, including retail, finance, insurance, real estate, and most service sectors. OSHA lists the exempt industries by NAICS code.
Here is the practical breakdown:
| Employer type | Recordkeeping required? | Severe-incident reporting required? |
|---|---|---|
| 10 or fewer employees, any industry | No | Yes |
| 11+ employees, partially exempt industry | No | Yes |
| 11+ employees, non-exempt industry | Yes | Yes |
| Federal contractors under certain programs | Check contract terms | Yes |
The severe-incident phone call applies to every employer, every size, every industry, no exceptions [2]. Your landscaping company with two workers is exempt from keeping a Form 300, but you still have to call OSHA if one of those workers dies or is admitted to a hospital overnight.
State-plan states sometimes go stricter. California requires employers to report serious injuries within 8 hours to Cal/OSHA, and its definition of "serious" is broader than federal OSHA's. If you operate in a state-plan state, read your state agency's rules alongside the federal ones.
What are the three OSHA recordkeeping forms and what goes on each one?
OSHA's system uses three forms, each doing a different job.
Form 300: Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses. This is the running list you keep all year. Each row is one recordable case. You record the employee's name (or mark it private for a privacy case), the injury date, a short description, the body part, and the outcome: days away from work, job transfer, restricted work, medical treatment beyond first aid, loss of consciousness, or a significant injury or illness diagnosed by a healthcare professional. You check the outcome column and log the number of days involved [1].
Form 300A: Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses. At year's end, you total the Form 300 columns and move the totals to Form 300A. You post Form 300A in a visible workplace spot from February 1 through April 30 of the following year. A company executive signs it, more than a safety manager [1].
Form 301: Injury and Illness Incident Report. For every case on Form 300, you complete a Form 301 within seven calendar days of learning about the injury or illness [1]. Form 301 goes deeper: the employee's full contact information, the healthcare provider's name and address, the time of the event, what happened, and what the employee was doing right before it. You can swap in an equivalent form, like a workers' compensation first report of injury, as long as it captures every data field.
Keep all three forms for five years following the end of the calendar year they cover [1].
What counts as a recordable incident under OSHA?
A work-related injury or illness is recordable if it results in any one of these outcomes, per 29 CFR 1904.7 [1]:
- Days away from work
- Restricted work or job transfer
- Medical treatment beyond first aid
- Loss of consciousness
- A significant injury or illness diagnosed by a licensed healthcare professional (even with no treatment)
"First aid" has a specific OSHA definition. It covers over-the-counter medications at nonprescription strength, cleaning and covering a wound, nonprescription eye patches, hot or cold therapy, and similar minor care. The moment a doctor prescribes medication, orders physical therapy, or sutures a wound, it stops being first aid and the case becomes recordable.
Work-relatedness is the other gate. An injury is work-related if an event or exposure in the work environment caused or contributed to it, or significantly aggravated a pre-existing condition. There are named exceptions in 29 CFR 1904.5: injuries from personal tasks outside normal job duties, self-inflicted injuries, symptoms that surface at work but come solely from a non-work event, and injuries from a workplace fight the employee started [1].
Mental health conditions can be recordable. If a licensed mental health professional diagnoses a work-related mental illness and recommends keeping the case private, you record it as a privacy case on Form 300 without the employee's name [1].
When do you have to call OSHA after a serious incident?
The severe-incident reporting rule is 29 CFR 1904.39 [2]. The deadlines are hard.
Fatality: 8 hours. Report a work-related death to OSHA within 8 hours of learning about it. The clock starts when you learn of the death, not when it happened. If a worker is hospitalized and dies three days later, you have 8 hours from the time of death.
Inpatient hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye: 24 hours. These three require a report within 24 hours of learning about the incident. "Inpatient hospitalization" means the employee was formally admitted, more than treated in an emergency room and sent home.
You report by calling OSHA at 1-800-321-OSHA (1-800-321-6742), calling the nearest Area Office, or using OSHA's online reporting portal. OSHA prefers a phone call so investigators can ask questions on the spot.
Have this ready when you call: the business name and address, the affected employee's name, the incident location and time, the number of employees affected, a contact name and phone number, and a short description of what happened.
Don't wait to gather every fact before calling. Report what you know inside the deadline, then follow up. Missing the deadline is its own violation, separate from whatever caused the incident.
What are the penalties for failing to report or record?
OSHA adjusts penalty limits every January for inflation. As of 2024, the maximum for a serious violation, which includes recordkeeping and reporting failures, is $16,131 per violation [3]. Willful or repeated violations reach $161,323 per violation.
Recordkeeping citations tend to run lower in practice, often $1,000 to $5,000 per item for smaller employers with a clean history. But OSHA can cite each missing or wrong entry on its own. A company that skips 15 recordable incidents in a year could face 15 separate citations.
Late fatality reports get treated harshly. In multiple enforcement actions, OSHA has issued penalties in the $7,000 to $15,000 range specifically for reporting a death late, on top of any citation for the hazard that caused it.
Under-recording is the bigger systemic problem. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has noted that researchers believe reported injury rates undercount actual injuries, especially in industries where workers fear losing their jobs for reporting [4]. OSHA runs enforcement programs aimed at employers whose numbers look suspiciously low next to their industry peers.
How do you fill out OSHA Form 301 step by step?
Form 301 has four sections. Here is what goes in each, and where employers slip up.
Section 1: Information about the employee. Name, address, date of birth, date hired, and sex. Straightforward. The one wrinkle is privacy cases: if the injury involves a sensitive condition (mental illness, HIV, needle stick, sexual assault, or certain other circumstances), leave the name off both Form 300 and Form 301 and mark it a privacy case.
Section 2: Information about the physician or other health care professional. Name and address of the treating provider, and whether the employee was treated in an emergency room or hospitalized overnight. ER visit but no admission? Check the ER box, leave the hospitalization box blank. Admitted? That triggers the 24-hour reporting call too.
Section 3: Information about the case. Date of injury or illness, time of day, whether the employee was on shift, and a description in the employee's words. Quotes work fine here. The more specific the description, the less OSHA has to ask. "Hurt back" is weak. "Employee was lifting a 75-pound box from floor level and felt sharp pain in lower back, then reported to supervisor" is defensible.
Section 4: Information about the task. What was the employee doing just before the incident? What object or substance harmed them? This is the section safety people actually use for hazard analysis.
Sign and date the form. You have seven calendar days from learning about the case to finish it [1].
What is electronic OSHA recordkeeping and who has to submit data online?
OSHA's Injury Tracking Application (ITA) makes certain employers submit their injury and illness data online every year. The rule is 29 CFR 1904.41 [5].
Establishments with 250 or more employees in industries covered by OSHA recordkeeping must submit Form 300A data annually. The deadline is March 2 of the year after the calendar year covered.
Establishments with 20 to 249 employees in high-hazard industries (construction, manufacturing, agriculture, warehousing, and dozens more listed by NAICS code) submit Form 300A data by the same March 2 date.
In 2023, OSHA finalized a rule making establishments with 100 or more employees in high-hazard industries submit Form 300 and Form 301 data online on top of Form 300A [5]. That's a big expansion. OSHA publishes the data, with personal identifiers stripped, on a public website. First submissions under the new rule were due March 2, 2024.
Smaller employers below these thresholds don't submit online, but they still keep the paper or electronic records at the workplace and hand them over if OSHA inspects or an employee asks. Employees and their representatives can see the Form 300 log at any time [1].
Can employees see OSHA injury records, and what privacy protections exist?
Yes. Under 29 CFR 1904.35, employees, former employees, and their personal representatives can access the Form 300 log for any establishment where they work or worked [1]. You provide access by the end of the next business day after a request.
Employee representatives, including unions, can ask for the whole establishment's injury and illness records. You can't redact individual entries to comply, except for privacy cases.
Privacy cases are the exception. If an injury falls into an OSHA protected category (mental illness, HIV/AIDS, sexual assault, needle stick or sharp injury involving blood-borne pathogens, or another sensitive case the employer decides could reasonably identify the worker), you enter "privacy case" in the name column of Form 300 and keep a separate confidential list matching names to case numbers [1].
Form 301 is tighter. Employees can request their own Form 301 anytime and you must provide it by the end of the next business day. A personal representative can request a specific employee's Form 301. But union representatives and other authorized employee representatives get the Form 301 only with the employee's written authorization, or they get an edited version stripped of personal identifying details.
How does an internal incident report differ from an OSHA report, and do you need both?
An internal incident report is whatever your company uses to document an event for its own reasons: spotting hazards, processing workers' comp claims, kicking off corrective actions, or tracking trends. There's no required format. Many companies log near-misses this way too, which OSHA's recordkeeping system ignores.
You almost certainly need both, because they do different jobs.
Your internal report should go deeper than Form 301. It should capture root causes, witness statements, photos, corrective actions, and follow-up deadlines. Form 301 records the facts of the injury. Your internal report records why it happened and what you're doing about it.
Some attorneys suggest flagging internal reports as "prepared in anticipation of litigation" to shield them under attorney-client privilege. That's a real strategy, but it needs actual attorney involvement, not a stamp on the page. Talk to your employment attorney before you count on it.
One practical note. If your workers' compensation carrier uses a first report of injury form, check whether it hits every field on Form 301. OSHA accepts substitute forms as long as they carry all equivalent information [1]. Using one form for both jobs saves time and cuts the odds of two documents that contradict each other.
What should a small business do to set up an OSHA recordkeeping system?
Start with the exemption check. Go to OSHA's injury and illness recordkeeping page and look up your NAICS code to see if you're partially exempt [1]. If you have 10 or fewer employees, you're fully exempt from recordkeeping, but you still report severe incidents by phone.
If you do have to keep records, the setup takes a few hours, not weeks.
First, download the official forms from OSHA.gov. They're free. Form 300, 300A, and 301 all come as fillable PDFs [6].
Second, decide where you'll store them. OSHA allows electronic records. A shared folder on your company drive works. So does basic safety management software. The one requirement is that records stay accessible at the establishment and available within four hours if OSHA asks during an inspection [1].
Third, train whoever fills them out. That person needs the seven-day deadline for Form 301, the year-end process for Form 300A, the posting rule, and the phone-call triggers for severe incidents.
Fourth, post the 8-hour and 24-hour reporting numbers somewhere obvious. The OSHA hotline is 1-800-321-6742. Program it into the phone of anyone likely to be first to know about a serious incident.
Building a written safety program alongside your recordkeeping? SafetyFolio's safety program generator can put a custom written program in place fast, usually with the incident reporting procedures your employees need to see in writing.
For the wider OSHA compliance picture, and to make your recordable injury log actually prevent something, tie it to your hazard communication program and your lockout tagout procedures. Injuries in your 300 log often trace straight back to those two areas.
What are common mistakes employers make on OSHA incident reports?
The most common mistake is not recording cases at all. An employer decides something "wasn't that bad," skips the entry, then gets cited during an inspection when a workers' comp record shows a visit that should have been logged.
Second most common is misclassifying first aid versus medical treatment. Prescription-strength medication? Not first aid. Physical therapy ordered? Not first aid. When in doubt, record it. An over-recorded case triggers no penalty. An under-recorded one does.
Vague injury descriptions cause trouble. "Back injury" or "slipped" gives OSHA nothing and makes it harder for you to spot patterns. Write what actually happened.
Missing the Form 300A posting window, February 1 to April 30, blindsides a lot of employers. It's easy to forget because it happens once a year. Set a recurring calendar reminder.
The wrong person signing Form 300A matters. OSHA requires the signature of a company executive, defined as the owner, an officer of the corporation, the highest-ranking company official at the establishment, or that official's supervisor [1]. A safety manager signing alone doesn't cut it.
Multi-establishment companies sometimes park all records at headquarters. The rule is that records stay at the establishment where the employees work, or stay readily accessible to those employees by computer. Remote centralization is allowed only if employees can reach the records within one business day [1].
Frequently asked questions
How long do you have to file an OSHA incident report after an injury?
For the Form 301 incident report, you have seven calendar days from the date you learned about the injury or illness. For severe incidents the clock is shorter: 8 hours to report a work-related fatality, 24 hours for inpatient hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye. These deadlines start when you learn of the event, not when it occurred.
Is there a form you have to use, or can you make your own?
OSHA requires the information captured on Forms 300, 300A, and 301, but you can use equivalent substitute forms as long as they contain all the same data fields. Many companies use their workers' compensation first report of injury as a substitute for Form 301. Any substitute must capture equivalent information. Download the official free forms at OSHA.gov to be safe.
Does OSHA require you to report near-misses?
No. Federal OSHA's recordkeeping standard does not require recording or reporting near-misses (incidents where no injury occurred). Tracking near-misses in your own internal system is still one of the best leading indicators of where serious injuries will land. Some state-plan states may have different requirements, so check your state OSHA agency's rules.
What happens if an employee refuses to report an injury?
The recording obligation is yours as the employer, not the employee's. If you learn about a work-related injury by any means (supervisor observation, coworker report, workers' comp claim), you must record it if it's recordable. OSHA's anti-retaliation rules under 29 CFR 1904.35 also prohibit disciplining employees for reporting injuries, so policies that discourage reporting are a separate legal problem.
Can OSHA show up at your workplace just because of an incident report?
Yes. Fatality and hospitalization reports often trigger an OSHA inspection. Severe injury reports are among the top triggers for OSHA inspections. OSHA may also open a referral investigation if another agency (like workers' comp) shares information suggesting a recordable incident was ignored. Filing accurately is your best protection.
Do independent contractors get recorded on your OSHA 300 log?
Only if you supervise their day-to-day work. Under 29 CFR 1904.31, you record injuries to employees on your payroll. If a contractor is employed by a staffing agency, you record the injury on your log if you supervise the work, and the staffing agency does not also record it (cases go on one log, not both). Truly independent contractors you don't supervise go on the contractor's own records.
What is the difference between OSHA Form 300 and Form 301?
Form 300 is the running annual log: one row per recordable case, with brief identifiers and outcome columns. Form 301 is the detailed incident report for each individual case, with a full narrative of what happened, who was involved, and where they were treated. Every case on Form 300 needs a matching Form 301 completed within seven days of learning about the incident.
Does a COVID-19 infection at work have to be recorded on OSHA forms?
Yes, if it's work-related and meets the general recording criteria. OSHA confirmed in guidance issued in 2020 that COVID-19 is a recordable illness when a worker contracts it on the job. The hard part is establishing work-relatedness, which requires a reasonable determination that workplace exposure was the likely cause. OSHA acknowledged that determination is often difficult for employers to make with certainty.
What is the OSHA Injury Tracking Application (ITA) and who has to use it?
The ITA is OSHA's online portal for electronic data submission at ITA.osha.gov. Establishments with 250 or more employees in covered industries must submit Form 300A data by March 2 each year. Establishments with 20 to 249 employees in high-hazard industries have the same Form 300A deadline. As of 2024, establishments with 100 or more employees in high-hazard industries must also submit Form 300 and Form 301 data electronically.
Can you get an OSHA citation for recording too many injuries (over-recording)?
No. OSHA does not penalize employers for recording cases that later turn out not to be recordable. The risk runs the other way: under-recording and failing to report are the violations OSHA cites. If you're unsure whether a case is recordable, record it. You can void the entry later with a note explaining why, and OSHA's recordkeeping guidance covers how to correct entries.
Do you have to report an injury if it happens at a remote work location?
Work-relatedness applies to remote workers too. If an employee working from home is injured while performing work tasks (not personal activities), it's potentially recordable. OSHA guidance specifies that the home counts as the work environment only when the employee is working there. An injury from a personal task at home during a break is generally not recordable.
How do you report a work-related fatality to OSHA?
Call 1-800-321-6742 (1-800-321-OSHA) within 8 hours of learning about the fatality, or contact your nearest OSHA Area Office directly. You can also report online through OSHA's website, though OSHA prefers the phone call so investigators can ask immediate questions. Have the employee's name, the time and location of the incident, and your contact information ready before you call.
What OSHA training do supervisors need on incident reporting?
Federal OSHA sets no minimum training hours for recordkeeping, but supervisors who handle incident reports need to understand what makes a case recordable, the seven-day deadline for Form 301, the 8/24-hour phone reporting triggers, privacy case rules, and how to write an accurate injury description. Connecting this to broader osha training programs helps supervisors treat recordkeeping as part of the safety job, not a side chore.
Sources
- OSHA, 29 CFR Part 1904 Recordkeeping Rule (Injury and Illness Recording and Reporting Requirements): Covers all recordkeeping requirements including Form 300, 300A, 301, retention, employee access, privacy cases, and the definition of first aid versus medical treatment.
- OSHA, Injury and Illness Reporting (29 CFR 1904.39): All employers regardless of size must report work-related fatalities within 8 hours and inpatient hospitalizations, amputations, or eye losses within 24 hours.
- OSHA, Penalties (2024 penalty amounts): Maximum penalty for a serious violation is $16,131 per violation as of 2024; willful or repeated violations up to $161,323.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII): BLS publishes annual workplace injury and illness data; researchers have noted potential undercounting of actual injuries in the reported rates.
- OSHA, Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses Final Rule (29 CFR 1904.41), 2023: 2023 rule requires establishments with 100+ employees in high-hazard industries to submit Form 300 and 301 data electronically; first submissions due March 2, 2024.
- OSHA, Injury and Illness Recordkeeping Forms (Forms 300, 300A, 301): OSHA provides official free downloadable Forms 300, 300A, and 301 as fillable PDFs.
- OSHA, Law and Regulations (Standard Interpretations): OSHA letters of interpretation clarify work-relatedness determinations, privacy case definitions, and substitute form acceptability.
- OSHA, Injury Tracking Application (ITA) portal: Electronic submission portal for required annual Form 300A and, for larger employers in high-hazard industries, Form 300 and 301 data.
- BLS, Employer-Reported Workplace Injuries and Illnesses News Release: BLS reports approximately 2.8 million nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses reported by private industry employers in 2022.
- OSHA, Whistleblower Protection Program (anti-retaliation, 29 CFR 1904.35): Employers are prohibited from retaliating against employees who report work-related injuries and illnesses.