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OROSHARecord
Programs

Safety Score

OSHARecord's proprietary rating system that grades companies from 0-100 (A through F) based on their OSHA violation history relative to industry benchmarks.

Safety Score is a term from U.S. workplace-safety regulation — typically a category in OSHA enforcement, a citation classification, or a worker-protection concept under the OSH Act. The definition here is the practical worker-facing meaning. Understanding Safety Score is part of reading OSHA enforcement records defensibly. Citation classifications (serious, willful, repeat, other-than-serious, de minimis) carry meaningfully different implications for both employers and workers, and the worker-relevant interpretation often differs from the strict legal definition.

Each company page on OSHARecord surfaces Safety Score-relevant data for that specific employer, so the general definition here translates into concrete enforcement-history detail on the per-employer pages workers actually use.

What It Means

The Safety Score is a composite metric developed by OSHARecord to provide a standardized, easy-to-understand assessment of a company's workplace safety record. Scores range from 0 (worst) to 100 (best) and correspond to letter grades: A (80-100), B (60-79), C (40-59), D (20-39), and F (0-19). The score is calculated from four weighted factors: violation rate compared to industry average (40% weight), which measures how a company's violation count per inspection compares to others in the same industry; serious violations ratio (40% combined with the overall factor), which captures the proportion of citations classified as Serious; willful and repeat violation count (25% weight), reflecting the most egregious and systemic safety failures; penalty amount relative to industry average (20% weight), indicating the financial severity of violations; and inspection history (15% weight), which accounts for the frequency and recency of OSHA inspections. Companies are benchmarked against others in their industry sector so that inherently higher-hazard industries are compared fairly. The Safety Score is recalculated each quarter when OSHA publishes updated enforcement data.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "Safety Score" mean in OSHA context?

OSHARecord's proprietary rating system that grades companies from 0-100 (A through F) based on their OSHA violation history relative to industry benchmarks.

Why does Safety Score matter for workplace safety?

The Safety Score is a composite metric developed by OSHARecord to provide a standardized, easy-to-understand assessment of a company's workplace safety record. Scores range from 0 (worst) to 100 (best) and correspond to letter grades: A (80-100), B (60-79), C (40-59), D (20-39), and F (0-19). The sc...

Related Terms

Serious Violation
A violation where a workplace hazard could cause death or serious physical harm and the employer knew or should have known about it.
Willful Violation
A violation where the employer intentionally and knowingly committed an act that violates OSHA standards with plain indifference to the law.
Repeat Violation
A violation where the employer was previously cited for the same or substantially similar hazard within the past five years.
OSHA Inspection
An official workplace examination conducted by an OSHA compliance officer to determine whether an employer is meeting safety and health requirements.

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About This Data

Definitions based on OSHA standards, the OSH Act of 1970, and federal enforcement guidance. Penalty amounts reflect 2026 inflation-adjusted maximums. See our methodology.