By SOS-Switched Onto Safety
What is the importance / benefits of an external audit?
Independent of the organisations structure and ‘an arms distance from management’. It doesn’t matter if they are health and safety, environmental or quality (HSEQ) audits. The benefits can be extremely helpful to an organisation with validity of their product or service.
External audits of HSEQ items assist a company in identifying areas for improvement such as (but not limited to) process optimization, waste reduction, and increased customer satisfaction. In addition to this, implementing audit recommendations (from findings) enables an organisation to improve operations, increase profitability, and achieve its objectives more efficiently / effectively.
Essentially external, independent audits can give an organisation (but not limited to):
- Improveing internal system and controls.
- Provide credibility.
- Gives relevant stakeholders confidence.
- Improved accountability and transparency
- Identifies areas for improvement.
- Ensure compliance to legal, statutory or client specifications
- Offers Independent findings i.e. no bias.
Aside from the importance of the legal requirements for a statutory audit, the undertaking of the audit itself provides important and valuable insight as to how the organisation is performing.
However, as we have discovered during our times auditing some people and organisations find these audit findings to be a criticism of their work, products or services etc.. This is not true, audits are a great tool to use to identify any gaps within internal processes which need closing out before they become a bigger issue down the path.
If you would like an obligation free quote for independent/transparent health, safety, environmental or quality audits, drop us a line, we’d love to give you one as we love auditing……………