What Is an EHS Audit? Understanding the Basics

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 (EHS) 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. 

What Is an EHS Audit?

A health and safety audit is an assessment of an organization’s health and safety systems, procedures and policies.  

The essential goals of an audit can be broken down into three major components: 

1. Safety: Employers must provide a safe workplace for their employees, and an effective audit can highlight hazards and unsafe procedures. With this information, organizations can then take preventative and corrective actions to eliminate these practices from their operations.

2. Efficacy: Performing an audit ensures that an organization’s health and safety systems, policies and tools (PPE, software, etc.) function well and keep employees safe.

3. Compliance: Audits can be a useful tool in ensuring an organization’s operations comply with legal requirements. By providing a record of compliance, audits help organizations avoid violating regulations and paying fines.

What Is the Importance of a Safety Audit? 

Different from safety inspections, audits focus on the operations, processes and programs of health and safety protocols. The benefits of EHS audits include, but are not limited to the following:  

• 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  

How To Conduct an EHS Audit 

Audits can be broken down into a six-step process:

1. Gather documentation and personnel: Before performing an audit, it’s important to gather the required documentation. These documents include records of previous safety training, reports of workplace incidents and instructions for emergency procedures. Workers participating in the audit should be made aware of their responsibilities. 

2. Conduct research: Review the current safety policies, interview employees, perform a walkthrough of the entire workplace and assess the equipment, materials and surfaces of the workplace. 

3. Review findings: Gather and review all research findings. Throughout this review, an assessment should be made based on key areas such as employee safety, regulatory compliance and adequacy of safety policies, procedures and documentation. 

4. Make recommendations: Make recommendations based on the assessments made in the previous step. These recommendations should be prioritized in accordance with the level of risk and the likelihood of an incident. 

5. Implement required changes: Once the necessary staff members have approved any recommendations, these must be implemented as quickly as possible and in accordance with the agreed prioritization. 

6. Publish and document results: To ensure there is visibility across the company, the findings of the health and safety audit must be published. This should include a clear layout of the proposed changes to be implemented and acknowledgment of the safety hazards that are being addressed. Finally, everything must be documented accurately for future viewing and assessment.

EHS Audit Checklist  

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.  

Who Should Conduct a Health and Safety Audit? 

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. 

How Often Should Workplace Safety Audits Be Performed?  

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.  

An EHS audit can also 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 health and safety 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 a safe working environment and make sure the organization is meeting all applicable health and safety requirements.  

What Should You Do With EHS Audit Results? 

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. 

For more information on how our software can support your organization in an EHS audit, click the link below!