Personal Tasks at Work and OSHA Recordkeeping

Injuries from personal tasks done at work outside assigned working hours, like fixing your own car in the shop after the shift, are not work-related. During working hours, or when the employer directs the activity, the exception does not apply.

Not every injury inside the building belongs on the OSHA log.

An injury or illness is work-related if an event or exposure in the work environment caused or contributed to it, or significantly aggravated a pre-existing condition (29 CFR 1904.5). It is presumed for anything that happens in the work environment unless one of nine exceptions applies: the person was there as a member of the public; symptoms surfaced at work but came solely from a non-work event; voluntary wellness, fitness, or recreation; eating or drinking for personal consumption; personal tasks outside assigned working hours; personal grooming, self-medication for a non-work condition, or a self-inflicted injury; a motor vehicle accident in a company parking lot or access road while commuting; the common cold or flu; and mental illness, unless the employee voluntarily provides a qualified professional's opinion that it is work-related.

Check whether the employee was engaged in a personal task outside assigned working hours. Deciding work-relatedness after severity is the most common ordering mistake, and it pushes borderline cases onto the log, or off it, for the wrong reason. The fix is to settle where the employee was, what they were doing, and at whose direction before anyone discusses treatment or severity.

HR safety partners often hear the sensitive details first, so privacy handling and a clear line between HR files and the OSHA log matter most.

Teams skip the timing and task analysis.

Work-relatedness is the first gate: a case that fails it never reaches the recording criteria, the 300A totals, or the rates. A case that passes still needs a recording criterion before it goes on the log.

• Employer-required activity can remove the personal-task logic.
• When it is not obvious whether the event happened at work or away from it, evaluate the employee's duties and environment to decide whether work caused, contributed to, or significantly aggravated the condition (1904.5(b)(3)).

A mechanic stays after the shift to rotate the tires on their own truck and crushes a finger: not work-related. The same injury during the shift while working on a customer's vehicle would be.

1. Record the time and the assigned hours.
2. Identify the task and its purpose.
3. Check whether the employer directed it.
4. Apply the exception only if the task was personal and outside working hours.

What to keep in the case file:

• What the employee was doing, where, and at whose direction
• Whether the location is part of the work environment
• Which exception you considered and the facts that support or rule it out
• For aggravation cases, the condition before the event and what changed after it

300log keeps the facts that decide work-relatedness (where the event happened, what the employee was doing just before, and what happened) in each case's 301 fields, right next to the log entry they support.

For a quick answer without an account, use the free recordability checker.

• Public Street Motor Vehicle Accidents and OSHA Recording
• How to Record Work-From-Home Injuries on OSHA Logs
• Work-Relatedness Under OSHA 1904.5: A Practical Decision Path
• Medical Removal Cases and OSHA Recordkeeping