U.S.
GOVERNMENT > Social Support > Occupational
Safety and Health Administration
OSHA's Mission
OSHA's mission is to assure the safety and
health of America's workers by setting and
enforcing standards; providing training,
outreach, and education; establishing partnerships;
and encouraging continual improvement in
workplace safety and health.
Our Services
OSHA and its state partners have approximately
2100 inspectors, plus complaint discrimination
investigators, engineers, physicians, educators,
standards writers, and other technical and
support personnel spread over more than 200
offices throughout the country. This staff
establishes protective standards, enforces
those standards, and reaches out to employers
and employees through technical assistance
and consultation programs.
The Public We Serve
Nearly every working man and woman in the nation
comes under OSHA's jurisdiction (with some
exceptions such as miners, transportation workers,
many public employees, and the self-employed).
Other users and recipients of OSHA services
include: occupational safety and health professionals,
the academic community, lawyers, journalists,
and personnel of other government entities.
Service Improvement Plan
OSHA is determined to use its limited resources
effectively to stimulate management commitment
and employee participation in comprehensive
workplace safety and health programs.
Surveying Our Public
At OSHA, we are dedicated to improving the
quality of our efforts and know that to be
successful we must become an agency that is
driven by commitment to public service. The
first step is for OSHA to listen and respond
to its customers. Accordingly, we conducted
a survey to learn more about what employers
and employees think of OSHA's services.
Because workplace inspections are one of OSHA's
principal activities and because voluntary
efforts to improve working conditions ultimately
depend on strong enforcement, our survey focused
primarily on the inspection process. We asked
a random sample of employees and employers
who had recently experienced an OSHA inspection
what they thought of the inspection in particular,
and of OSHA's standards and educational and
other assistance activities in general.
Service Standards
We based OSHA's new standards for public service
on what we learned from the survey, from meetings
with employee and employer groups, and from
focus group discussions with workers from many
plants and industries across the country.
Our public service improvement program will
be an ongoing one. We will continue to gather
information on the quality of our performance
in delivering services in areas not included
in this year's survey, particularly in the
construction sector. Next year, too, we plan
to learn more about public response to our
assistance and consultation programs.
