Food Safety News – July 2010
E audits - The Next Step
Audits and inspection are essential if businesses want to know about and control standards.The term “audit” originated from the financial sector as a systematic way of “looking at the books” of a company and has since spread from safety management through to customer care standards and other areas |
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Types of audit
There are various types of audit depending on the area of the business you wish to examine for example with Health & Safety. In HSG 65, the HSE talk about “vertical” and “horizontal” audits, where vertical examines the safety system from top to bottom within a certain field e.g. operations, whereas horizontal looks at control at a certain management level within the organization e.g. controls at supervisory level.
Quality management audits largely look at what are termed “adequacy audits” i.e. the adequacy of the systems or procedures and “compliance audits” looking at the success of complying with those standards
Audits versus inspection
People often ask what is the difference between an audit and an inspection?
Though there are many definitions it is largely recognized that audit look at systems whilst inspections identify the consequences of system failures e.g. a hole in a floor is a failure of the maintenance system. Though there are benefits and costs of each, audits are largely longer, more expensive but more forward looking whilst inspections are quicker and look at existing defects.
Priorities and perspectives
Whether undertaking an audit or inspection, deficiencies have different priorities. Their significance depends upon who is looking, for example, an accountant might have a different perspective on a defect than an EHO. The importance is for all decision-makers to be in agreement about what constitutes a priority and how best to tackle them. As safety experts our job is to identify and evaluate risks together with cost-effective solutions
Reporting
Any audit or inspection, no matter how good, is only of use if properly communicated. It has to be written and communicated in the right way. To achieve this auditors and management need to know exactly how to word any report as well as have clear lines of communication - too few involved may mean decisions don’t get made or personal politics intervene.
The audit explosion
With the advent of newer management techniques in the 1970s audits started to increase, by the late 1980s audits were extensively used. In the 1990s the use of computer generated audits and inspections increased however these were much hampered by the need to print out audit forms and type in reports - adding to the effort involved.
With improvements in computing and the advent of handhelds, the use of electronic auditing gradually increased, this has since exploded with the internet and improved web-ware. Now the possibilities appear endless.
What is the role of e-audits?
E –audits or electronic audits can massively increase the awareness of senior decision-makers to standards on the ground. This awareness is all too often critical with large number of units and extensive geographical spread.
E –audits provide a number of benefits
- Immediate feedback – instant action
- Easy and rapid distribution
- instant output of key summary information for senior management
- Ready tracking and comparison of standards and progress
- Makes accountability instant and transparent
- Ready integration with performance management
The Future – e-audits and predictive analysis
With e-audits now, well established some companies are using information gathered to develop further analysis. At Hygiene Audit Systems our experts work with clients on systems to predict when problems are likely to rise and enable management to head off issues before they get too big. “This is a very exciting and rewarding part of our work” says Dr Ackerley “ being able to identify and sort problems early is a challenge but is certainly less stressful for all but also prevents companies making knee-jerk decisions which can go wrong or be costly.”
To find out more about our e-audit systems and how we can help you please contact Graham Murphy, director of Hygiene Audit System graham@hygieneauditsystems.com
