That time of year again? Your Health, Safety, Environmental or Quality Audit has come around? I take a look at how to be prepared, here’s how.

 No matter what industry or niche your business specializes in, one of the things you and your competitors share is auditing. For companies and business that find themselves in the production, construction or manufacturing sector, one of the most dreaded times of the year is when the auditors come to play.

 Truth be told, these auditors are not always out to have your head. In fact, at the end of the day, they are just doing the job which pays their bills too. Even though it may look like they are poking for your mistakes. And for all our auditor’s who are reading this, I know some of you are in fact friendly and make the process very easy!

 However back to the stereotypical auditor, as a business owner you can work against this. When you allow enough time to prepare for that audit, the auditors can only huff and puff. That’s how to make them all bark and no bite at the end of the day.

Getting Prepared for The Audit

The biggest mistake a lot of companies make when they are preparing for an audit is to hope for the best. They think they have everything in place already and so, push on to the next stage.

 With this in mind, they are just being hopeful that they have not left anything to chance, rather than being sure. It is, thus, not surprising that when the worst comes, they scramble to cover their bases.

 For me, I don’t believe a company should be put on its heels after an auditor finds something out. In fact, you should have ensured all loose ends were handled before the auditor came in. This would generally mean that you are applying your processes 100% of the time.

That, and that only, is the way to ensure you are always bold in the face of any auditor or a team of them.

Building Up the Right Team

Depending on your industry and the niche of your company, you would have different quality, environmental or safety standards that you are supposed to follow. Some are to be implemented while others are simply to have been provided for.

 The challenge that comes with the daily running of a business can easily make you lose track of some of the most important things. Trust me when I say an auditor who is worth their salt will probe till they get to that very last thing you left out, or totally forgot about.

 ‘What to do, then?’

Ensure your team has an advisor or expert when it comes to knowing these standards.

 In fact, I recommend ensuring that this person is the head of the team. Rather than ask why, I think you should ask why not. After all, it is their job to crawl into the head of the auditor and prepare for each and everything they might want to tackle in your company.

 A trusted consultant of advisor will help you put everything in place, leveraging their experience in the industry to exceed even the toughest auditors expectations.

 They will also be able to help you ensure your business is being run the right way for your employees and the environment, much after the audit is done with.

 Such services are offered at Oversight Consulting where we work with a lot of businesses to ensure they never leave a stone on ground for auditors to turn when they do decide to come around.

 Proper Handling of The Audit

You would want to give yourself as little liability in the auditing process as possible. That is why you should hand over the main task of facing the auditor to your advisor or consultant.

 Of course, you will still be involved – but only in the capacity of furnishing your advisor with the information they need to answer certain questions.

 The importance of this is that the advisor can always claim they don’t know one or more things when the auditor starts asking heated questions.

They will be in the best position to diffuse the heat by asking to know what information the auditor would like to have. The advisor would then be able to gather this information and provide it to the auditor in the most harmless way possible.

 Should a client have been the one in the room, they would be put on the spot. Not being able to answer the questions, or provide a convincing argument in the moment, which could lead to a negative result.

 Now that you know just what you should do, how about hiring an advisor to take the stress out of your next audit? I would love to know about some of your experiences with auditors - shoot us a message!