While it’s essential to establish health and safety practices at your workplace, the work doesn’t stop there. Health and safety professionals need to constantly review safety measures to ensure compliance with legal obligations and identify strengths and weaknesses.
That’s where environment, health and safety audits come in. These audits help identify risks, ensure compliance and drive continuous improvement. But what exactly does an EHS audit involve? How can you prepare? And what should you do with the results?
In this guide, we break down the key elements of an EHS audit, from preparation to follow-up, so your organization can stay ahead of risks and regulations.
A health and safety audit is an assessment of an organization’s health and safety systems, procedures and policies to ensure that they are meeting regulatory standards.
The essential goals of an audit can be broken down into three major components:
An EHS audit can be either voluntary or required. A voluntary audit can be used to evaluate how well the health and safety program is working within an organization and to implement improvements.
Mandatory audits can be requested as part of a settlement between an organization and a government agency. In both scenarios, the objectives are the same – to ensure the health, safety and well-being of all employees and to ensure the organization is meeting requirements where applicable.
Audits can reveal prior undetected problems, which can massively improve workplace safety and reduce liability. They can also present areas for improvement that result in the organization being run in a more efficient and cost-effective way. Likewise, they can benefit reputation, boost employee morale and reduce the risk of accidents and injury. Other benefits include:
Identifying and eliminating hazards and unsafe practices
Reducing the risk of workplace accidents and injuries
Increasing employee safety, well-being and morale
Improving staff awareness of safety regulations
Boosting brand reputation
Demonstrating commitment to employee health and safety
Lowering policy premiums by providing insurers with evidence of EHS excellence
Audits can be carried out either externally or internally. An audit can be conducted by a properly accredited in-house health and safety team member, or it can be carried out by an outside party, such as an independent consultant.
Both internal and external audits present advantages and disadvantages. While an internal audit is a faster, more cost-effective method of discovering safety hazards in the workplace, an external audit provides an objective report that can be benchmarked against other companies and allow for the nomination of safety auditing awards.
The HSE requires internal audits to be conducted by a “competent person,” who, in their definition, “has sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities that allow them to assist you properly.” External audits are performed by private companies.
If you opt for an external audit, you can prepare by:
Utilizing an EHS audit checklist can simplify this process. Checklists help notify your personnel of the corrective actions required to fix potential problems. With a checklist in place, personnel are also less likely to forgo important tasks, keeping them focused, organized and accountable. It should be noted that no checklist should be considered all-inclusive, as there may be some unique issues that were not previously identified. While a checklist is crucial, it is essential to consider additional elements.
There is no international standard in place regarding the frequency of audits, so how often you should conduct regular safety audits depends on both the specific company and industry. For example, manufacturing industries will need to audit more frequently than office-based organizations due to the increased level of risk.
Performing audits too infrequently can have detrimental consequences for your organization. Staff may get complacent between audits and forgo guidelines. Balancing intermittent formal audits with routine checks and inspections may be the best option for most organizations.
Once an EHS audit has been carried out, it’s important to review your findings. Findings typically resemble a comprehensive audit report, as well as general findings. Scrutinizing this data will enable you to identify problem areas within your organization and create a plan to tackle them. This plan should identify deficiencies and help you prioritize them in terms of urgency.
To conclude, EHS audits are invaluable for collecting data, determining your organization’s health and safety standing and ensuring your organization remains healthy and safe in the future. But EHS audits can also be challenging, requiring ample preparation, document collection and subsequent corrective planning. Software solutions, like those offered by Evotix, can streamline these processes and transform your audit experience for the better.
Click the link below for more information on how our software can support your organization in an EHS audit.
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