Get the OSHA 300A summary right and then post it wrong, and you've still got a compliance gap. The OSHA 300A posting requirements are simple to state and easy to get wrong in practice: one page, on the wall, at every covered site, from 1 February to 30 April, signed by the right person. Miss the window, post it in the wrong spot, or skip it because nothing happened that year, and you've created a citation risk out of paperwork rather than an actual injury. Below is exactly what has to go up, where, for how long, who signs it, and what tends to go sideways when a company runs more than one location.
What exactly has to be posted, and where?
The requirement sits in 29 CFR Part 1904, the OSHA recordkeeping regulation, specifically the posting provision at 1904.32. Each covered establishment posts its own Form 300A — the one-page annual summary, not the full 300 Log and not the 301 incident reports behind it. Those stay in your files, available if OSHA or an employee asks to see them, but they don't go on the wall.
"Conspicuous place" is OSHA's own phrase, and it means what it sounds like: somewhere notices to employees are customarily posted, where people actually walk past it. That's usually a breakroom, a timeclock area, or a main corridor noticeboard — wherever your labour law posters, safety bulletins and shift schedules already live. Posting it in a locked office or a folder nobody opens doesn't satisfy the rule, even if the paper technically exists somewhere on site.
When does the OSHA 300A posting window open and close?
The 300A summarising last year's data goes up on 1 February and comes down on 30 April. That's a full three months, not a suggestion — take it down on 1 April because someone tidied the noticeboard, and you've posted for two months instead of three. The form itself covers the prior calendar year: the summary posted between February and April 2026 reports 2025's injuries and illnesses. You can read the underlying posting duty verbatim at 1904.32 in the eCFR, or start from OSHA's own recordkeeping overview at osha.gov/recordkeeping.
Who has to sign the OSHA 300A?
This is the part people get sloppy about, because "sign it" sounds administrative. It isn't. The rule requires certification by a company executive — specifically one of these:
- The owner of the company, if it's not incorporated
- An officer of the corporation
- The highest-ranking company official working at the establishment
- That official's immediate supervisor
A site safety coordinator or the plant's HR generalist typically doesn't qualify unless they happen to hold one of those roles. For a single-site business, this is often the owner or general manager. For a multi-site operation, it's usually the plant manager or site director — the most senior person actually working there, not a regional VP who visits twice a year and isn't based on site. Get the wrong person's signature on it, and the certification itself is defective, even if every number on the form is correct.
Do you still have to post it if nobody got hurt?
Yes. This trips people up constantly. If your establishment had zero recordable cases for the year, you still complete a Form 300A showing zeros across every category and post it on the same schedule, same location, same three months. A blank noticeboard isn't compliance — a form with zeros on it is. The same applies to establishments that are only required to keep a 300A and not a full 300 Log under certain size and industry provisions: the summary posting duty still applies. If you're unsure whether a specific case should have counted toward those totals in the first place, our free recordability check walks the case through the 1904.7 general recording criteria and tells you, or flags it as needing review rather than guessing.
What to post, where, and for how long
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| What | Form 300A annual summary only — not the 300 Log, not 301 reports |
| Where | A conspicuous place at each establishment where employee notices are customarily posted |
| Coverage | One establishment's own data — not a combined multi-site total |
| From | 1 February of the year following the reporting year |
| To | 30 April of that same year (a full three-month posting period) |
| Zero cases? | Still post — with zeros filled in, not left blank |
| Who signs | Owner, corporate officer, highest-ranking official at the site, or that official's immediate supervisor |
Table: the core OSHA 300A posting requirements at a glance, per establishment, per year.
Worked example: a multi-site retailer
Say a retail chain runs a head office, a distribution centre, and fourteen stores across three states. Payroll and HR sit centrally at head office, and that's also where the injury data gets compiled into each site's 300 Log through the year. Come February, the temptation is to print one 300A for the whole company and post it at head office, since that's where the paperwork lives.
That's not what the rule asks for. Each of the sixteen locations — head office, distribution centre, and all fourteen stores — is its own establishment for recordkeeping purposes, and each one posts its own 300A showing its own site's totals: its own deaths, days-away cases, restricted/transfer cases, other recordables, and its own hours worked and average employment for TRIR and DART purposes. A store that had one recordable sprain posts a form showing one case. A store that had zero posts a form showing zeros. Head office posts head office's own numbers, not a rollup of everyone else's. Sixteen locations means sixteen separate, correctly-totalled forms, each on that location's own noticeboard, each signed off — in practice, usually by the store or site manager, since they're the highest-ranking official actually working there day to day.
One EHS manager we spoke with, who oversees recordkeeping across a multi-state facilities portfolio, put it this way: "The posting date is the easy part — everyone remembers February 1st because it's on a calendar reminder somewhere. What catches people out is realising in March that three stores never got a form at all, because whoever set up the print run only counted locations that had an incident that year."
Where teams get this wrong
A handful of mistakes show up again and again in multi-site operations, and most of them are avoidable with a checklist rather than institutional memory.
- Posting only at headquarters. The most common failure in a multi-establishment company. Each site needs its own 300A with its own numbers, posted at that site — a single combined summary at the corporate office doesn't satisfy the requirement anywhere else.
- Taking it down early. The three-month window runs to 30 April. A site that clears its noticeboard in March, often during a routine tidy-up or a changeover of other seasonal notices, has posted for less than the required period.
- Skipping the posting entirely when there were zero recordable cases. No injuries doesn't mean no obligation. A completed 300A with zeros still has to go up on schedule.
- The wrong person signing. A safety coordinator, an admin assistant, or an HR generalist signing off because they compiled the data — when the rule requires the owner, a corporate officer, the top official at that site, or their immediate supervisor.
- Confusing posting with electronic submission. Posting the paper on the wall and submitting Form 300A data through OSHA's Injury Tracking Application are two separate duties with two separate deadlines. ITA submission for covered establishments is generally due 2 March each year — check OSHA's current establishment-size and industry thresholds for whether your site is covered — and doing one doesn't excuse skipping the other. Our guide to ITA electronic submission and the 2026 ITA deadline breakdown cover that obligation separately.
What happens if OSHA catches a missing or wrong posting?
Recordkeeping is a citable category on its own, separate from whatever the underlying 300 Log says about your actual injury rate. During an inspection, a compliance officer can ask to see the current posting, check the dates, and check who signed it — alongside reviewing whether the log itself is accurate and complete. Recordkeeping and posting violations have consistently shown up as a frequently cited category in OSHA's enforcement activity, not because the paperwork is complicated, but because it's an easy thing to check and an easy thing to overlook. Penalty amounts for recordkeeping citations are set under OSHA's current penalty structure, adjusted periodically — we won't quote a figure here, because it changes and we'd rather send you to OSHA's own recordkeeping page for the current number than print something stale. What's consistent is the qualitative pattern: recordkeeping citations are treated seriously enough, and are common enough, that "we forgot one store" isn't a defence an inspector is likely to find persuasive.
If you want to check how OSHA itself has ruled on edge cases around recordkeeping and posting duties, its Letters of Interpretation are public and worth searching before you assume — Job13's own interpretations index collects the ones relevant to recordability determinations.
Do partially exempt industries still have to post a 300A?
Establishments in industries listed under Appendix A as partially exempt generally don't carry the routine recordkeeping and posting burden that other industries do. But "partially" is doing real work in that sentence — these establishments still have to record certain severe events when they happen: a fatality, an in-patient hospitalisation, an amputation, or a loss of an eye, all reportable regardless of exemption status. If your NAICS code sits in that partially exempt list, don't assume "no 300 Log" also means "no obligations at all" — check the current list carefully, because misreading it either way creates a gap.
If your business runs on a spreadsheet built in-house, it's worth reading how that approach tends to break down at multi-site scale compared with dedicated software — our comparison of spreadsheets versus recordkeeping software covers where manual tracking usually falls over first, and it's often exactly here: sixteen sites, one spreadsheet, and nobody quite sure which tab was printed and posted where.
Getting the totals right before you post them matters just as much as the posting logistics — a 300A with a wrong days-away count is still a defective posting even if it goes up on 1 February and comes down on 30 April like clockwork. Job13's Pro plan builds your 300A automatically from your logged cases, correctly totalled, so you're posting the right numbers rather than a spreadsheet formula somebody half-trusts. See pricing for what's included, or start with the free recordability check if you're still working out whether specific cases belong on the log at all.
Frequently asked questions
When do you have to post the OSHA 300A?
From 1 February through 30 April each year, covering the prior calendar year's recordkeeping data. The posting must stay up for the full three months — taking it down early, even by a few weeks, means the establishment wasn't in compliance for the whole period the rule requires.
Where exactly does the OSHA 300A poster go?
In a conspicuous place, or places, at each covered establishment where notices to employees are customarily posted — typically alongside labour law posters, near a timeclock, or on a breakroom noticeboard. For companies with more than one location, every establishment posts its own copy showing its own site's data, not one combined company-wide version at headquarters.
Who is allowed to sign the OSHA 300A as the certifying official?
Only the business owner, a corporate officer, the highest-ranking official actually working at that establishment, or that person's immediate supervisor. A safety coordinator or HR staff member who compiled the numbers generally doesn't meet the certification requirement unless they also hold one of those roles.
Do we still need to post a 300A if we had zero recordable injuries?
Yes. A year with no recordable cases still requires a completed Form 300A showing zeros in every category, posted on the same 1 February to 30 April schedule as any other year. Skipping the posting because "nothing happened" is itself a compliance gap.
Is posting the OSHA 300A the same as submitting it electronically through the ITA?
No — they're two separate obligations. Posting means physically displaying the form at the establishment for the required period. Electronic submission through OSHA's Injury Tracking Application is a separate duty, generally due by 2 March each year for covered establishments depending on size and industry thresholds, and completing one doesn't satisfy the other.
