What must be posted, and when
By February 1 each year, employers covered by 29 CFR Part 1904 must post the Form 300A Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses covering the previous calendar year, and keep it up through April 30. The posting location is wherever notices to employees are customarily posted — the same wall as the labor-law posters, in practice — and it must stay legible and un-defaced for the full window.
Only the 300A summary is posted, never the Form 300 log itself. The log contains case-level detail and names; the summary contains totals. Posting the log is a privacy mistake, not extra credit.
The certification requirement
Before posting, a company executive must certify the summary: an owner, a corporate officer, the highest-ranking company official working at the establishment, or that person's immediate supervisor (29 CFR 1904.32). The certification attests the executive has examined the underlying log and reasonably believes the summary is accurate and complete.
The signature is personal accountability, not a formality — delegating it to whoever runs the safety binder does not satisfy the rule, and a knowingly false certification is the kind of fact pattern that turns a recordkeeping issue into a willful one.
The fields that get botched
Three summary fields cause most of the rework:
- Annual average number of employees — a computed average across pay periods, not headcount on December 31.
- Total hours worked by all employees — actual hours for the establishment, the denominator behind TRIR and DART rates; estimating it badly distorts the rates everyone downstream uses.
- Establishment scope — one summary per establishment, not one per company. Multi-site employers post at each covered location.
Zero injuries, former employees, and other edge cases
A year with no recordable cases does not suspend the duty: post the 300A with zeros. Employees, former employees, and their representatives are also entitled to copies of the summary on request under 1904.35, and the summary must be retained for five years like the rest of the records.
If the establishment was exempt by size or industry for the year, there is nothing to post — but re-check the exemption annually; crossing 11 employees at any point last year, company-wide, ends it.
Frequently asked questions
February 1 without the scramble
SafeGora totals the year's log into the 300A, computes average employment and hours from your data, and tracks the certification and posting window per establishment.