Employees in their first year at a company are injured at a rate well above their share of the workforce. Travelers, the largest workers' compensation insurer in the United States, analyzed more than 1.2 million claims filed from 2021 through 2025. First-year employees accounted for approximately 37% of all injuries and 34% of total claim costs, and they lost more than 5 million workdays over the five-year period. The pattern is not limited to one insurer's book of business. In national U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, workers with less than one year of service accounted for 33.4% of injuries involving days away from work while holding about 25% of employment.

 

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) publishes an annual list of its most frequently cited standards and describes the same risk from the enforcement side. The hazards that generate the most citations are largely the hazards that injure new employees. That makes the Top 10 a practical guide to building an onboarding program.

 

What Are OSHA's Top 10 Most Cited Violations?

 

OSHA's Top 10 ranks the standards cited most frequently during federal inspections over the fiscal year. The agency announces the preliminary list each September at the National Safety Council (NSC) Safety Congress & Expo. The FY 2026 figures cover federal OSHA citations issued from October 2025 through August 2026. Citations issued by state-plan OSHA agencies are not included.

 

 

Source: OSHA preliminary FY 2026 data, announced at the NSC Safety Congress & Expo, September 2026.

 

The same 10 standards appeared in FY 2025, in a different order. Total citations across the 10 fell from 23,537 to 17,701, a decline of about 25%.

 

Why the Same Violations Recur

 

Most of the Top 10 standards include requirements that attach to each individual employee, not to the facility.

 

• Under the Hazard Communication Standard, employees must be trained at the time of their initial assignment.
• Under Lockout/Tagout, each authorized employee must be trained in the energy control procedures.
• Under the Powered Industrial Trucks standard, each operator must be trained and evaluated before operating a truck.
• Under fall protection training, each employee exposed to a fall hazard must be trained by a competent person.

 

Each of these obligations restarts with every hire. A facility can be fully compliant in January and out of compliance in March without changing any equipment, simply because new employees started work before their training was completed and documented.

 

A second factor is that many citations involve program and documentation failures rather than missing equipment, such as an incomplete chemical list, an unlabeled secondary container, or a training record that cannot be produced during an inspection. These gaps are easy to create and easy to overlook, which is why they persist.

 

What Each OSHA Standard Covers

 

The 10 standards fall into four hazard categories. Several of the most-cited standards are construction standards (Part 1926). General industry facilities such as warehouses, plants, and distribution centers are governed by parallel standards in Part 1910. Those parallels are noted below where they apply.

 

Fall Hazards

 

Four of the 10 standards address falls. These include general fall protection requirements (1926.501), fall protection training (1926.503), scaffolding (1926.451), and ladders (1926.1053).

 

Section 1926.501 requires construction employers to protect employees from falls of 6 feet or more using guardrails, safety nets, or personal fall arrest systems. In general industry, the equivalent requirement at 29 CFR 1910.28 applies at 4 feet.

 

Section 1926.503 requires that each exposed employee be trained by a “competent person.” OSHA does not require a specific credential for that role. It defines a “competent person” by capability and authority, meaning someone who can identify existing and predictable hazards, with the authority to take prompt corrective action to eliminate them. The employer must document the training in a written certification record that lists the employee's name, the training date, and the signature of the trainer or employer.

 

Both 1926.501 and 1926.503 appear separately in the Top 10, which identifies two distinct failures. Employers are failing to provide the protection, and they are failing to train employees to use it.

 

Chemical and Respiratory Hazards

 

The Hazard Communication Standard (1910.1200) requires employers to maintain a written hazard communication program with a list of the hazardous chemicals present, keep a safety data sheet (SDS) for each one, label containers, and train employees. In 2012, OSHA aligned the standard with the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS). GHS is the international system that standardizes label elements, hazard pictograms, and the 16-section SDS format.

 

The Respiratory Protection standard (1910.134) covers protection against oxygen-deficient atmospheres and airborne hazards such as dusts, fumes, gases, and vapors. It requires a written program, medical evaluation, and training. It also requires fit testing of every tight-fitting respirator before the employee first uses it and at least annually after that, to confirm that the facepiece seals to the wearer's face.

 

Energy and Equipment Control

 

The Lockout/Tagout standard (1910.147) requires procedures that isolate hazardous energy before employees service or maintain equipment. The standard defines an energy source broadly to include electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, chemical, and thermal energy.

 

The Powered Industrial Trucks standard (1910.178) governs forklifts and similar vehicles. It requires formal instruction, practical training, and an evaluation of each operator's performance in the workplace. The employer must then certify that the operator has been trained and evaluated, and must re-evaluate each operator at least once every three years.

 

The Machine Guarding standard (1910.212) requires guards that protect operators and other employees from point-of-operation hazards, ingoing nip points, rotating parts, and flying debris.

 

These three standards address the hazards most closely tied to severe injuries. OSHA's National Emphasis Program on Amputations focuses enforcement on lockout/tagout and machine guarding, because the agency's enforcement history shows that employees are frequently injured when machinery is not properly guarded or maintained.

 

Personal Protective Equipment

 

The Eye and Face Protection standard for construction (1926.102) requires protection against flying particles, molten metal, liquid chemicals, acids or caustic liquids, chemical gases or vapors, and injurious light radiation. The general industry counterpart is 1910.133. It is the only dedicated personal protective equipment (PPE) standard in the Top 10. That understates PPE's role, however, as respiratory protection and personal fall arrest are also PPE, but they are cited under their own standards.

 

Why Are First-Year Employees Most at Risk?

 

Travelers measures risk by tenure with the employer, not by age or total years of work. The 2026 report found that first-year employees represent an outsized share of injuries in certain sectors, including 51% in restaurants, 46% in small businesses, and 44% in construction. Injured construction workers missed an average of 114 days, the longest of any industry studied. Injured manufacturing workers missed an average of 76 days.

 

The increased risk reflects how much each workplace differs from the next. Someone new to a facility has not yet learned its traffic patterns, its specific lockout procedures, where its chemicals are stored, or which equipment has a known history of problems. Those hazards are specific to the site, and an employee learns them only through training and time on the job there.

 

The Most Common Injuries Among New Employees

 

The leading causes of injury are routine rather than catastrophic. When Travelers isolated first-year claims in an earlier analysis of 2015 to 2019 data, the most common causes were overexertion (27%), slips, trips, and falls (22%), struck-by-object incidents (14%), cuts and punctures (6%), and caught-in or caught-between incidents (6%).

 

Across all employees, overexertion remains the most common cause of injury in manufacturing, accounting for 36% of claims in the 2026 analysis [16]. Slips, trips, and falls rank among the leading causes of the most expensive claims, those exceeding $250,000, in every industry segment Travelers analyzed.

 

Which OSHA Standards Address the Injuries New Hires Suffer?

 

The table below maps each common cause of first-year injury to the OSHA standards that govern it. Read this way, the Top 10 works as a checklist of the controls that should be in place before a new employee begins work.

 

 

An open citation in any of these areas points to a hazard that has not yet caused an injury. If that hazard exists in an area where newly hired employees work, it should be the top priority for correction. Travelers' 2026 report recommends that employers focus specifically on onboarding and safety training for new hires.

 

What Effective New-Hire Safety Training Includes

 

Effective new-hire training is site-specific, hands-on, and documented. Orientation videos are useful for consistent baseline instruction, but they should not be the whole program. The hazards that injure employees are specific to each building, each piece of equipment, and each workflow, and they must be shown in person where the work happens.

 

Tie training to the hazard categories above. Forklift operators must be trained, evaluated, and certified by the employer before operating a truck. Lockout/tagout procedures should be demonstrated at the machine, not only reviewed in writing. Employees who work at height must be trained by a competent person, and the training must be recorded.

 

Connect each hazard to the equipment that controls it. Every new employee should know where that equipment is kept, how to inspect it, and whom to notify when it is damaged.

 

A First-90-Days Safety Checklist

 

1. Before the first shift: Issue and fit all required PPE. No new employee should reach the floor without it.
2. Day one: Conduct a facility walkthrough covering exits, alarm points, first aid, traffic patterns, and the location of eyewash and shower stations, which OSHA requires where employees may be exposed to corrosive materials.
3. First week: Deliver hazard communication training. Review the chemical list, SDS locations, and labeling.
4. First week: Conduct a task-specific hazard review at the employee's actual workstation, led by a designated, qualified trainer.
5. First two weeks: Complete and document training, evaluation, and certification for any regulated equipment the employee will operate, including powered industrial trucks and fall arrest systems.
6. Day 30: Review any near misses and any procedures the employee found unclear. New employees often notice hazards that long-tenured staff no longer see.
7. Day 60: Observe the employee performing assigned tasks rather than relying on self-reporting.
8. Day 90: Complete a formal competency sign-off and repeat any training the employee has not yet applied on the job.

 

Document every step. During an inspection, those records demonstrate compliance. After an injury, they show what was covered and when.

 

Equipment That Supports Each Hazard Category

 

Every standard in the Top 10 depends on equipment. For new employees, correctly specified and maintained equipment is often the primary control between an unfamiliar task and an injury.

 

 

Global Industrial supplies each of these categories, along with the safety services and expertise to help determine what your facility requires. We can supply that.®

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

When does OSHA release its Top 10 list?

 

OSHA announces the preliminary Top 10 each September at the National Safety Council Safety Congress & Expo. The FY 2026 list was announced in September 2026 and covers federal citations issued from October 2025 through August 2026.

 

How much can an OSHA violation cost?

 

The maximum penalty is $16,550 per serious violation and $165,514 per willful or repeated violation [20]. OSHA normally adjusts these amounts each year for inflation but did not raise them for 2026.

 

What is the most cited OSHA violation?

 

Fall Protection, General Requirements (29 CFR 1926.501), with 4,041 citations in preliminary FY 2026 data. It has been the most-cited standard for 16 consecutive years.

 

What percentage of workplace injuries happen in an employee's first year?

 

In Travelers' 2026 analysis of more than 1.2 million claims, first-year employees accounted for approximately 37% of injuries and 34% of claim costs. Earlier BLS data shows the same pattern, as workers with less than one year of service accounted for a larger share of lost-time injuries than of employment.

 

What is the difference between 1926.501 and 1926.503?

 

Section 1926.501 requires employers to provide fall protection, such as guardrails, safety nets, or personal fall arrest systems. Section 1926.503 requires employers to train each exposed employee through a competent person and to document that training in a written certification record.

 

Do these standards apply to warehouses and manufacturing plants?

 

Some apply directly. Hazard Communication, Lockout/Tagout, Respiratory Protection, Powered Industrial Trucks, and Machine Guarding are general industry standards. The fall protection, scaffolding, ladder, and eye and face standards on the list are construction standards. General industry facilities follow parallel requirements in Part 1910, including 1910.28 for fall protection and 1910.133 for eye and face protection.

 

References

 

1. The Travelers Companies, Inc. (2026, May 4). Travelers Injury Impact Report highlights longer recovery times amid declining injury rates [Press release]. https://investor.travelers.com/newsroom/press-releases/news-details/2026/Travelers-Injury-Impact-Report-Highlights-Longer-Recovery-Times-Amid-Declining-Injury-Rates/default.aspx
2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). Lost-worktime injuries and illnesses by length of service, 2004 [Data set]. https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/os/osbl0029.pdf
3. National Safety Council. (2026, September 15). OSHA reveals top 10 workplace safety violations for 2026 [Press release]. https://www.nsc.org/newsroom/osha-reveals-top-10-workplace-safety-violations
4. Blanchard, D. (2026, October 5). Top 10 OSHA violations of 2026. EHS Today. https://www.ehstoday.com/standards-regulatory-compliance/osha/media-gallery/55406916/top-10-osha-violations-of-2026
5. National Safety Council. (2025, September 16). OSHA's top 10 safety violations show persistent risks to workers [Press release]. https://www.nsc.org/newsroom/osha-top-10-safety-violations-show-persistent-risk
6. Hazard communication, 29 C.F.R. § 1910.1200 (2026). https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.1200
7. The control of hazardous energy (lockout/tagout), 29 C.F.R. § 1910.147 (2026). https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.147
8. Powered industrial trucks, 29 C.F.R. § 1910.178 (2026). https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.178
9. Training requirements, 29 C.F.R. § 1926.503 (2026). https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1926/1926.503
10. Duty to have fall protection, 29 C.F.R. § 1926.501 (2026). https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1926/1926.501
11. Duty to have fall protection and falling object protection, 29 C.F.R. § 1910.28 (2026). https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.28
12. Definitions, 29 C.F.R. § 1926.32(f) (2026). https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1926/1926.32
13. Respiratory protection, 29 C.F.R. § 1910.134 (2026). https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.134
14. General requirements for all machines, 29 C.F.R. § 1910.212 (2026). https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.212
15. Eye and face protection, 29 C.F.R. § 1926.102 (2026). https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1926/1926.102
    Eye and face protection, 29 C.F.R. § 1910.133 (2026). https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.133
16. The Travelers Companies, Inc. (2026). 2026 Injury Impact Report. https://www.travelers.com/injuryimpactreport
17. The Travelers Companies, Inc. (2022, May 2). Travelers Injury Impact Report shows more than one-third of workplace injuries occur during the first year on the job [Press release]. Business Wire. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220502005074/en/
18. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (n.d.). Ergonomics: Overview. U.S. Department of Labor. https://www.osha.gov/ergonomics
19. Medical services and first aid, 29 C.F.R. § 1910.151(c) (2026). https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.151
20. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (n.d.). OSHA penalties. U.S. Department of Labor. https://www.osha.gov/penalties
21. 21. National Association of Home Builders. (2026, June 3). Top OSHA violations of 2025; No increase in penalties for 2026. https://www.nahb.org/blog/2026/06/top-osha-violations-2026-penalties

 

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