Why Audit?
The question you have always wanted answered on this vital topic.
A company’s attitude to the health and safety of its workforce and others speaks volumes about its overall values and professionalism.
This means that there are not just obvious legal and moral reasons for effectively managing health and safety – it also makes sound business sense.
Good records on health, safety and accident prevention are increasingly seen as a competitive advantage, attractive to shareholders, potential business partners and customers.
The underlying principles of health and safety management that contribute to such records are actually quite straightforward, essentially requiring employers to ensure the absence of risk to the safety and health of employees and others “so far as is reasonably practicable”.
Meeting this requirement cannot be achieved by one-off interventions, and organisations need to consider the “system” they have in place for managing health and safety (the policies, people and procedures), before trying to find “solutions”.
It is extremely important to periodically check that these important foundations for managing health and safety are up to scratch.
Significant reassurance can come through an audit of the system that should be working to keep things healthy and safe. This process can help to highlight things that work well and that should be maintained, and also identify areas that might require increased attention, contributing to a culture of continuous improvement.
Only by auditing current performance can informed decisions be made, actions prioritised and resources appropriately allocated to issues that are identified as truly important, rather than merely presumed to be important. Organisations that devote attention to this measurement and improvement activity also invariably see reduced accident rates, with consequent cost savings.
It is worth stating that an audit differs from a safety inspection. Inspections primarily assess physical workplace conditions and activities and, through observation, compliance with legal and best practice requirements can be checked. Audits, however, look at the adequacy of the health and safety management system itself, identifying the quality of the system, as well as how it is implemented.
In order for an audit system to be effective, a number of requirements should be met.
An audit should seek to compare the organisation’s management system against a suitable “standard”. There is currently no certifiable standard for health and safety management, but a number of best practice guidance documents on the subject are in existence and should be covered by an audit. Primarily, these are: HSG65 - the Health and Safety Executive’s “Successful Health and Safety Management”; the British Standard guidance document BS8800; and the quasi-standard OHSAS 18001.
Flexibility in auditing is crucial if organisational requirements and objectives are to be met and reflected. Some key topics need to be addressed by all organisations, such as occupational health and the management of fire and emergency situations, but others are more sector-specific, for example safer people handling in healthcare settings and the operation of lift trucks in logistics firms.
Tailoring an audit to suit the “risk profile” of a particular organisation enables the degree of compliance with relevant legislation, such as the Work at Height Regulations, to be easily identified.
It is also important that a bespoke approach continues into the reporting stage, perhaps through the production of quantitative results that allow benchmarking across different sites and against industry averages. Honest and pragmatic recommendations that will help an individual organisation get to where it needs to be are crucial.
It surely goes without saying that audits should be carried out by trained and competent auditors. The practice requires certain knowledge and skills, both related to the “standard” against which the audit is being conducted, and the actual techniques involved in auditing.
Many organisations prefer to use an experienced external consultant for auditing work, but there are options for those wanting to train their own “competent auditor”. In considering this, it is important to research how delegates are trained, how their competence is assessed and whether they will be supported in the production of an audit of their own organisation.
One final point about audits concerns the motivation for carrying them out. A successful audit system is seen in a positive light, not as a nit-picking exercise with a primary purpose to find fault.
Look for ways to publicise and celebrate any achievements that an audit identifies, and remember that the ultimate aim of an audit is to provide an enhanced level of protection to employees.
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