Taming the EHS Audit with a Responsive Safety Management Software Solution  

Conducting an environmental health and safety audit as an EH&S manager can feel like opening Pandora’s box. Still, this measure must be taken. What then, though? Although we’d like safety audit questions to result in simple answers, they typically do not. 

The findings usually lead to a second set of questions: What are we going to do about this? Who is going to do it? By when? How will we know it’s done? 

As a safety manager operating a robust EHS plan, you need a safety software program to address these inquiries head-on. It is imperative you’re able to assign and track follow-up responses to the initial issues found. Only when corrective actions are taken by the responsible parties can you be sure your EH&S program is mitigating risk, avoiding penalties, and minimizing chances that the same problems will reoccur. 

Dread around audits exists because they are perceived as reactive tasks in-waiting, with little means to fix unacceptable findings beyond “Yes/No” data entry. The EHS audit process usually results in increased desk work and paper trails for the safety manager, coupled with the unpleasant job of constant reminders for supervisors and staff who can actually effect change. 

No wonder safety managers avoid conducting audits. No wonder they lean toward an acceptance versus a rejection. No wonder safety management software solutions provide limited technical solutions for findings –– without additional action item delegation and management capabilities. 

This gap is a known shortcoming in most EH&S safety management software programs. Little value is added from investing in an EHS software solution that simply denotes an audit was performed without means for issues resolution. Audits are a challenging aspect of even the most strategic EHS plans, and the findings create their own set of challenges. This is why the results must be handled in a more thorough way through multifaceted applications. 

It just makes sense to manage tasks off-the-back of those findings and empower safety managers to delegate corrective actions to the staff who can actually execute them. Let us not forget the original intention of the audit: to establish an improved environmental health and safety culture in the workplace. Checking a box that it happened is simply not enough. 

There is a solution, though. If you’re interested in learning more before the next audit rolls around, which it inevitably will, please reach out to us. We’d love to discuss the many ways you can put Proact to work for you and your safety audit efforts.