Safety Sherpa Safety Sherpa
See what you're missing
Answer · Recordkeeping

Part of a shift worked — day away or restricted work?

2 min read Checked against current CFR text Sep 2026 Reviewed by Renae Irek
Short answer

Not on the day of the injury itself. You begin counting days away on the day after the injury occurred.

But if the injury prevents the employee from working a full scheduled workday on any subsequent day, that is restricted work activity and it is recorded.

29 CFR 1904.7 Letter of interpretation, 7 September 2010 Read it on osha.gov.

The day of injury is treated separately, deliberately

Almost every injury costs some part of the day it happened. Counting that day would make nearly everything a days-away case, so the rule starts the clock the following day. A partial day worked on the day of the injury is not, by itself, anything.

The day after is where it becomes recordable

Restricted work activity occurs when the employer prevents the employee from working the full workday they would otherwise have been scheduled to work. Sent home early on Tuesday after a Monday injury is restricted work. The same early finish on Monday is not.

Long shifts make this more common than it looks

On a sixteen-hour shift an employee can work a substantial day and still not work the full scheduled one. The test is the shift they were scheduled for, not a notional eight hours.

Related questions

Each answers one question with the rule it comes from.

Does the day of the injury count as a day away? What counts as restricted work? 1904.7(a) Recordable if we have no light duty available? 1904.7

Safety Sherpa is software, not a safety consultancy. This page quotes the cited regulation and links to the source text so you can read it yourself. It is not legal advice and does not replace a qualified person's judgment about a genuinely unclear case — our tools walk you through the decisions the regulations require and record your reasoning. The determination is yours to make.