Discuss about the Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) Audit.
The following is a report on the Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) audit and how to create an effective Audit Corrective Plan. The purpose of this report is to provide guidelines on how to come up with a Corrective Audit Plan as well as how to improve the OH&S in an organisation. This stems from the need for organisations wanting to see whether their activities are up to purr with their planned arrangements. Therefore an OH&S audit will help them to identify whether they are in line with their strategies and which ones need to be implemented.
Audit Corrective Action plan
An Audit corrective Plan is created when there is non-compliance identified in an organisation. The primary goal of this audit is to document the action to be taken for any non-compliance that has been identified in the organization. The action is then monitored until it is completed so that the OH&S in the organization is improved. Therefore an audit report is created to correct this non-compliance. , and at times, members in the organisations usually help as well (Donham & Thelin, 2016).
The structure of an Audit Corrective Plan usually entails the following: the action number, the actions, the responsibility, the priority date, the performance indicator and the date of completion. To come up with this audit, a thorough process is usually involved which entails:
The importance of an Audit Corrective Action Plan
From the above examples, we see that every organization needs an Audit Corrective Action Plan so that they can better manage their OH&S management system (Guzmán, Tompa & De Boer, 2014).
The ISO 45001 is standards for OH&S in an organization. The primary aim of the ISO 45001 is to improve the safety of workers in any organization around the globe. Millions of people working in organizations are faced with work and health hazards at their workplace. There are even some who die or end up in hospital, due to work related injuries. The ISO 45001 standards are made to improve the standards in an organisation. For instance, they aim at reducing accidents and ill health among workers. This makes the workplace environment safer to work in (Kelloway, Nielsen & Dimoff, 2017).
Also, the ISO 45001 helps in avoiding costly prosecutions. Costly prosecutions may arise due to suing of the organisation by the workers that have become injured at work. When the work environment is safe, then the organizations will not face any charges that might cost them. This can also lead to reduced insurance costs. This is because since no one is hurt, then no money is needed to cover their insurance.
The ISO 45001 also improves the OH&S in the workplace by creating a positive culture in the organisation. This is because when non-compliance is identified, then an action is taken for it and changes are made to the policies and procedures. This way the people in the organization see that their needs are taken care of and therefore have a positive culture in the organisation (Kvorning, Hasle & Christensen, 2015).
In any given organization the safety and health of the staff members are essential to the overall success of the company. Therefore it is crucial for an organization to come up with a management system that ensures this is accomplished. This management system is the OH&S. The OH&S as mentioned earlier allows an organisation to determine whether their activities comply with their arrangements. It also helps an organisation in identifying the weak and the secure areas in it, thus identifying the areas that need improvement and those that do not (Laberge, MacEachen & Calvet, 2014).
An internal audit is carried out by the organisation to improve the OH&S in an organization. This audit is used to identify the strengths and weaknesses in the workplace so that they can enhance the OH&S management system. The internal auditing usually involves examining the OH&S policy, the plans and programs and coming up with a way to implement them.
Planning is critical when creating an internal audit. This is because it helps the auditor identify the activities in the workplace that need to be changed and those that need to be improved. In the planning process, the type of audit is determined, e.g. is it a compliance audit, a system audit or a desktop audit. The planning process also involves gathering information from other sources such as the workmates or other staff members. This stage is critical to improving the OH&S in an organisation because it helps in establishing the areas that are weak and those that are strong (Reese, 2015).
Once the internal audit is planned, then it can be implemented in an organisation. The implementation is simply taking actions to the changes that have been made in the policies or the procedures. When the actions are implemented, the organization can improve in that their weak areas now become strong and also the areas that required improvement are work on as well. This will improve the OH&S management system because the areas that were not in compliance with the planned arrangements of the organization are dealt with (Sorenson & Barbeau, 2015).
Also, once a planned internal audit is implemented, it is monitored by the organization or the auditor. Monitoring ensures that the actions proposed are taking effect and that they are being done. Monitoring is usually done through a re-audit where the internal audit is reviewed to check whether it complies with the strategies and the plans of the organisation (Phillips et al., 2015). It helps in improving the OH&S of the company in that the changes made are monitored to check whether they are effective. If the changes are not practical or do not comply another auditing process can be carried out to rectify this.
Finally, the planned internal audits are reviewed to determine whether they comply with the OH&S management system. This is done at the end of the period of the audit. For instance, if the period of an internal audit to be completed in three months, then a review is done at the end of the three months to determine whether the internal audit improved the OH&S of the organization (Spiegel et al., 2018).
When creating an Audit Corrective Plan for an organization, the following factors need to be considered so that it can be effective for the OH&S of a company:
When creating an Audit Corrective Action Plan, it is essential to consider the priority or the importance of the actions identified. The activities that involve the most risks are prioritised first as opposed to those that are not. It is important to remember that the action plan is aimed at the safety and health of the workers in an organization (Matsuura, 2016). Therefore if there is non-compliance that posse as a high risk to the safety and health of the employers and employees, then it is put first in the audit.
It is essential to consider the roles and the responsibilities of the various people that will be involved in the auditing process. To come up with an Audit Corrective Action Plan, the following are included: the auditor, the auditee (company), the employees, observers and technical specialists. The auditor is the one who conducts the audit and can be from the company itself or can be outsourced. The employees are the persons that are relevant to the audit. They provide information about the non-compliance which the auditor then documents (Finkel et al., 2018).
The auditee is the organization that wants the audit to be conducted. Their role is usually to provide the necessary documentation needed to the auditor in terms of previous audits. The observers are generally persons who are involved in the auditing process such as the managers, for instance, the OH&S manager of the organisation.
Once the corrective actions are made they are usually monitored for the response. A period of time is generally given for the actions to be implemented, and at the end of this time, the actions are reviewed. This is important to check whether the actions are effective in the company or if they have been implemented. Therefore the timing of the actions needs to be considered because appropriate timing means the OH&S is improved in time.
This is an essential factor to consider when coming up with an Audit Corrective Action Plan because it helps in determining whether the OH&S of the company has improved. The corrective actions are tracked after a period of time to ensure that they are met. This is important because if they are not tracked then the organisation will not know whether they are effective and also the safety and health of the workers will not be assured (Sinelnikov, Inouye & Kerper, 2015).
This is also an important factor to consider because it also determines the effectiveness of the corrective actions. The actions are usually reviewed at the end of the time allocated for them to see how they have improved the safety and health of the company. The auditors do monitoring during the time of the implementation of the corrective plans to determine if they are effective in the company (Woodhull, Carande-Kulis & Biddle, 2016).
Every company needs an Audit Corrective Action Plan because it helps in improving the safety and health of the workers. The actions help in solving the risks that are present in the working environment and also prevent future related risks from happening again. This way, the safety of the workers is assured.
Also, an organization needs an Audit Corrective Plan because it creates a positive and healthy working environment. People are happy to work in an environment where there are no risks and where their needs are heard. Therefore the workers are positive and appreciate working in an organisation (Almost et al., 2018).
Lastly, a company needs an Audit Corrective Action Plan because it helps the company in keeping track of all their compliances. The action plan is usually documented, and therefore an organization can easily keep track of their compliance needs without having to forget to implement others (Yazdani et al., 2015).
The process for deriving the corrective actions is
Conclusion
An Audit Corrective Action Plan is essential for an organization to improve the OH&S in an organization. If the safety and health of an organization are not up to standards, it can cause fatalities such as death or hospitalisation of the employees. This does not do any good for the organization because they might even face some charges from being sued. It is essential to create corrective actions to improve the safety and health of the organisation.
References
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