Return

AUDITING

Auditing complements monitoring by checking that the organisation’s policy, organisation and systems are actually achieving the intended results. Audits are a measure of the reliability and effectiveness of the organisation’s systems. Audits need to pay particular attention to:

• The degree of compliance with health and safety performance standards and legal requirements
• Areas where standards are missing or inadequate
• Achievements of stated objectives within given timescales
• Injury, illness and incident data, including analysis of immediate and underlying causes, trends and common features

According to the Health and Safety Executive, "audit" can be defined as "the structured process of collecting independent information on the efficiency, effectiveness and reliability of the total health and safety management system and drawing up plans for corrective action".

The main aims of auditing should be to:

• Establish that appropriate management systems are in place
• Establish that adequate risk controls exist, are implemented and are consistent with the hazard profile of the organisation
• Establish that appropriate workplace precautions are in place

The auditing process will then involve the collecting of information relating to the health and safety management system and the making of a judgement concerning the adequacy and performance of that system. This, in turn, will involve interviewing individuals, examining documents and carrying out visual observations. Effective auditing involves the use of competent individuals or teams who should either be independent of the organisation or independent of the department within the organisation being audited.

Audits should assess the key elements of the health and safety management system. Namely, the:

• Policy
• Organisation
• Planning and Implementation
• Measuring Systems
• Review Systems

Methods should also exist for checking the efficiency of the audit itself.

Organisations often use benchmarking of audit results, either against other comparative organisations or against different departments within the same organisation, as a means of measuring relative health and safety performance.

The Health and Safety Executive stress that organisations committed to health and safety should consider incorporating their audited health and safety performance in their published annual reports.

Return