A health and safety audit is an essential element in the safe management system of an organization. Health and safety is beyond just ensuring compliance, and conducting a health and safety audit is the best way to achieve that.
What’s a health and safety audit?
A health and safety audit is a proactive approach that determines how effective the safety systems are; through evaluating the health & safety systems, policies, and safety procedures of the organization.
What Is Covered In A Health And Safety Audit?
Typically, conducting a health & safety audit is a comprehensive approach to validate the effectiveness and compliance of health and safety management. These audits help in determining the areas of improvement and thus proactively deal with safety issues and improve the well-being of employees.
A health & safety audit will address the below aspects
- Assess the existing health & safety policy, procedures, and systems
- Evaluating how well the safety practices and policies are working
- Compliance Checks with local, state, and federal regulations
- Investigating the awareness of employees on health and safety practices and procedures
- Identifying the potential risks in the workplace that may lead to incidents or accidents.
- Review the OHS system and evaluate its overall performance.
- Review of incident and accident reports
Benefits Of A Health And Safety Audit
The benefits of an effective health & safety audit cover the following benefits:
Enhanced safety
Since a health & safety audit helps in recognizing and addressing potential areas of risks and hazards, accidents and incidents can be reduced, ultimately improving the safety of employees.
Compliance
These audits help in ensuring that the organizations are in adherence to the prescribed standards for health and safety. With a health & safety audit, businesses can rest assured that they are compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
Cost savings
A health and safety audit analyses the existing procedures and recommends the changes to be implemented. This helps in saving significant operating costs. As potential risks are identified and addressed in the early stages, the costs related to accidents and incidents can be prevented.
What Is The Purpose Of A Health & Safety Audit?
- To identify any potential hazards in policies, procedures, or equipment
- To assess the performance of the health & safety system
- To evaluate the competence of employees and their level of understanding in health & safety areas
- To develop and execute relevant measures to improve health & safety
- To check the safety of workers and equipment
How To Do A Health And Safety Audit?
For an effective health and safety audit, it is important that the person who audits possess a high level of competence and expertise. If you are concerned about the well-being of employees, we recommend you be proactive by hiring health and safety consultants.
At Green World Group, we have a thorough understanding that these audits can make a notable difference in the workplace. Hence, we work toward reducing the risk of safety issues and derive the measures to mitigate or eradicate those risks. We deliver the practical knowledge and skills that benefit organizations to have improved safety and ensure legal compliance with safety standards.