Compliance Audit

Compliance audits are one of the basic safety audits, where a safety auditor reviews a company’s safety rules and policies to ensure that it adheres to BIS14489 or Factory Ac standards or other safety regulations. Failure to comply can lead to hefty fines. 

A compliance audit following standards facilitates stringent measures to employ a set of programs, regulations, record-keeping practices and training modules that regulate safe work conditions. 

To evade fines, companies tend to put their sole focus on compliance audits. This can be counter-productive as compliance audits concentrate on controlling tangible safety issues while being oblivious to immediate unsafe acts and behaviors. 

Program Audit:

Evaluating safe practices sometimes requires dissecting the rule book by gauging inputs from employees and every single individual component to determine if the program can establish safe outcomes 

Safety program audits are the only solution that puts your HSE program to the test, extensively evaluating the design and effectiveness of your safety program from the inside-out. While program audits can effectively find gaps in the implementation of your safety program, on its own, program audits lack the authenticity to determine top standards. 

Management System Audit

Management system audit is a combination of compliance and program audits. Its goal is to evaluate the existing performance of the safety program and determine if it conforms to company policy and regulatory norms. 

A management system audit integrates a more comprehensive auditing approach, where compliance reviews, worker interviews and workplace observation are intertwined into a single auditing process to give you an overall picture of your safety program. 

Conclusion

History is never a good indicator of the effectiveness of an audit program. Conducting manual audits can be labor-intensive, time-consuming and expensive. Even the pay-off may not always be result-oriented, especially if a company has an elongated period of zero blemishes with minimal recommendations post audits. 

With tight safety budgets and no tangible results, companies eventually drop auditing off their safety program. While this can prove detrimental in the long run, it also opens up the organization to vulnerabilities that can adversely affect reputation, employee morale and take a steep cut from your bottom-line.