Safety Audit

The Executive Audit programme is designed to assess a company's position relative to an Internationally recognised standard in Health & Safety. The programme is Standards based rather than law based although there is a requirement, in parts of the programme, for compliance with health & safety legislation as one would expect.

The Audit is carried out by the user answering a series of questions, each designed to test compliance against the known standard. At the end of each session on the Audit Trail, three reports are generated from within the programme, Statistics, Recommendations and Action. These reports and how to access them are discussed further in this manual.

There are three reasons why a business should carry out health & safety audits:

1.Any business needs to maximise it's profits to survive and, as the Audit suggests, anything that can have an adverse effect on the bottom line of the business should be the subject of control. The Audit identifies those health & safety issues which are having a detrimental effect on the bottom line and suggests ways in which that position may be improved.

2.Employer Liability (Compulsory) Insurance premiums are escalating generally for all businesses because of the high level of claims for dam-ages against their employers, by employees for injuries and diseases which are work related. Improving health & safety in the workplace and reducing risk, reduces the liability for the Insurance Company thereby potentially reducing costly insurance premiums.

3.Improvement of standards in the workplace and reduction of risk to employees is what health & safety legislation is trying to achieve. When the enforcing authorities visit the workplace, either as a result of injury to employees (etc.) or a routine visit, Inspectors will be looking for positive evidence of the business working to some form of plan to improve health & safety standards.

Providing the business answers the questions in the Audit honestly, attends to the recommendations in the report and creates and carries out an action plan based on the findings of the Audit, all three situations as described above should improve to the benefit of the business.