Occupational Health & Safety: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has long been the regulatory backbone for workplace safety in the United States, setting and enforcing standards to protect employees from hazards on the job. In 2025, compliance with OSHA regulations will be increasingly important as workplaces face new challenges due to technological advancements, remote work dynamics and shifting industry standards.
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I think it’s great that OSHA is now recognizing the role that mental health plays in workplace safety. If an individual isn’t doing well mentally, they are likely more at risk of physical injuries, both to themselves but also to those around them. Burnout and other mental health factors can lead to people being less “on top of it” or less aware of their surroundings, which in some industries can lead to huge safety issues for the person as well as potentially other workers nearby. I also think that the adoption of smart technology for safety monitoring is great because as technology progresses, there are more and more ways that it can be utilized to increase workplace safety, and OSHA recognizing that can help make those safety measures become more widely used. I’m glad that OSHA is always updating their policies and what they recognize/talk about because having the most up-to-date safety measures means that workplaces will be safer and there will be fewer accidents or issues that in hindsight could have been prevented if they had been using the newest safety technology and information.
It is incredibly informative to hear about these changing standards for OSHA and helpful to learn about what is changing with the advent of new technologies to promote safety. But, what I remain curious about for OSHA compliance is what level of businesses can afford the proper equipment (as such they likely focus more on safety protocol than equipment hopefully) and the effectiveness of implementation from management to those who are actually doing the work that puts them in harm. While supervision is incredibly important, I wonder moreso about how effective supervision is in high stress environments where work is constantly happening around the clock. It would be interesting to hear from those that are responsible for the implementation of OSHA standards and their methods of ensuring that what they implement actually works itself into everyday practice on worksites. Finally, we often see videos of work being done improperly which might just be biasing this thought of mine as seeing work done properly is less likely to be promoted as it is less exciting and therefore garners less attention.
This article is a very comprehensive overview of how to comply with OSHA in 2025. I liked that in the article it was mentioned that company attitude toward safety is a reason why some safety measures don’t work as they should. I also liked that OSHA has started to look at mental health and wellbeing as a source of potential hazards, as when someone is stressed and burnt out they can’t truly focus on the task at hand and are prone to accidents. A different point on the list in this article is that VR/AR training had proven to be effective in training people, I hadn’t expected that due to the differences that come with VR/AR and the real world, but I also can see that having training that fully walks through dangerous scenarios to the end in real time can help trainees understand how to act in those situations. On an unrelated note, I liked how all the ads were for safety gear.
I think it's cool that OSHA is shifting to also include emotional wellbeing and anxiety reduction as a part of their orders which employers must follow. If someone comes into work very anxious or stressed, they're probably going to be less focused on the task at hand, and that's when accidents occur. Usually when people aren't paying attention or get overconfident is where things really break apart. I also thought it was interesting that they are incorporating VR/AR training. I bet it must be fun to wear a VR headset at work and get a tour of the place. It's also interesting that they're trying to give employees smart devices with AI to mitigate real-time risks. I could see that being annoying though, because imagine if your smart AI watch beeps every 5 seconds saying "perceived risk!! cease activity!!" when you really aren't in any danger at all. They would probably engineer something like that to be way more cautious than it needs to be on account of someone getting hurt if the watch didn't go off, and then they might get sued.
When I hear about OSHA, my first reaction is always about protecting physical health at work. But I was surprised to see that in the latest trend, mental health is also listed as an important point. In fact, especially in the theater industry, practitioners are often faced with short and intensive deadlines to complete work. Due to the characteristics of performances taking place at night, many workers have to work after 10 o'clock at night. Take myself as an example. I always feel excited after rehearsing or performing at night. So when I get home, although my body is very tired, because the brain has not been working in an excited state for a long time, it takes me 1-2 hours to recover to a relatively calm state before going to sleep. But because of the late bedtime, people will be deep in thought and fatigue the next day, and they need to force themselves to focus on work. In the long run, this state will be a vicious cycle, leading to great mental stress. So I want to see OSHA's investment in mental health, and whether it can feel the working state of theater practitioners after it is actually implemented.
OSHA has always come with the connotation of being strictly about workplace physical safety, so it is cool to see that they are now starting to focus on mental health as well. I do think this will probably get a lot of backlash from some people in the older generations who think still that mental health should not be considered health since they had to repress theirs, but I do think we are moving in the right direction by allowing mental health to start playing a role in the workplace. I am interested to see how OSHA can really make rules about mental health, due to the fact that every one has a different mental state. I assume they will produce something closer to guidelines rather than rules, but I do think that technically all of the OSHA rules I'm thinking about are actually considered guidelines.
It’s interesting to read about how OSHA has to change to meet the needs of changing workplaces and technologies. It’s a direct reflection with tangible outcomes on such changes, so it really puts the changing workplace into scope. In my opinion, for example, it’s strange that OSHA is now enforcing safety guidelines for remote workers. It makes you think how our homes are now a part of our workplace, ever since the COVID pandemic. In this same line of thought, it’s also great to see that OSHA is tuning in more and more to the mental health of workers, not just the physical health. Working seems to be taking an ever-increasing toll on workers’ mental health, so it’s more important than ever to be conscious of these effects. It doesn’t surprise me that employee engagement is listed as a challenge for meeting OSHA standards. I can imagine how hard it is to balance the number of trainings, as well as the content of training, to keep employees engaged.
I find it amazing that organizations like OSHA are now recognizing mental health as well as physical health in the workplace. Similarly the fact that they are including hybrid working into their regulations as well seems like a really big step in the right direction. The fact that organizations like OSHA are starting to use terms like mental health days and encouraging people to ask for help when they need it is really going to help decrease how stigmatized mental health issues are and normalize needing breaks to take care of yourself. I also like how even when someone works at home, by OSHA standards, the employer is still responsible to make sure they have a certain standard of working conditions from home as well. Its also interesting to see how OSHA is willing to acknowledge where their regulations have lacked in the past and how they are improving them now.
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