Why is a Health and Safety Audit Important?
As well as identifying gaps, health and safety audits are important for challenging the benchmarks you’ve set out in your safety management system.
They’re really helpful for coming up with actionable steps you can take to improve your business’ safety, and can be used to:
- Document that your safety management system complies with legislation
- Test if your safety management system is achieving its objectives
- See if your safety management system is maintaining the performance criteria and the auditing system is effective
- Assess whether your organisation has completed any previous modification compliance audits, when necessary
- Constantly improve your organisation
What Types of Safety Audits are there?
There are many types of safety audits, but the two most widely used are:
- Management system audits
- Safety function audits
Management System Audits:
A management system audit is “horizontal”. This means it looks across the entire company structure and considers the broad, in-depth scope of management policies and procedures that are in place to manage the organisation’s health and safety at the site.
Management system audits are typically assessed against the following standards:
- ISO 45001 – Occupational Health and Safety
- ISO 14001 – Environmental Management
- ISO 9001 – Quality Assurance
Safety Function Audits:
Safety function audits are “vertical”. This means they look at the detail of a specific activity through a vertical slice of the organisation’s structure, from senior management to the workplace.
Safety function audits include, but are not limited to:
- Electrical safety management systems
- Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Safety Training
- Fire Safety Awareness Training
- Compressed Gas Cylinder Safety Training
The Safety Audit Process – 6 Steps
- Identify Areas to Audit
- Decide How Often to Audit
- Conduct the Audit
- Document the Results
- Report the Findings
- Create an Audit Action Plan
In these modern days of business, every organization is looking out for a single solution for their problems in various business areas. Integrated management system is one such solution if it is implemented properly. Global Manager Group helps in implementing Health and Safety Management System properly by providing ISO 14001 auditor training and ISO 45001 auditor training.
One of such globally verified and popular ISO 14001 Auditor Training and ISO 45001 Auditor Training are available online at web, which taking care of learning each and every key elements of the ISO 14001:2015 and ISO 45001:2018 standards respectively such as clause wise requirements, documented information process, systematic audit approach, how to performing audit, non confirmative assessment, and many more, that will help auditor in effective implementation of EMS and OHS systems.