Safety audits evaluate your compliance to Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards. Safety audit software replaces paper based audits with digital forms which optimizes the audit process from data collection to reporting. However, assessing how your safety audit software is performing can be difficult. The following are 3 signs to look for to asses if your safety audit software is lacking in any way.
- You cannot easily review all past program area audits and corrective action recommendationsYour safety audit software should be able to keep historical records of previous audits and compare them to the current audit.Maintaining safety audit records over time makes it possible to identify trends and condition monitor assets over time. With this data, organizations can predict future performance and determine maintenance and management activities needed. This is important because poor compliance performance in the long term increases risk, which in turn increases cost, and can jeopardize a company’s license to operate.
- Managing your safety audits is taking too much timeIf your safety audit software doesn’t have mobile device capabilities, processes can slow down waiting for workers to return to their desks to use the software. If any parts of the process involve paper and pen or use of excel spreadsheets for reporting, your safety audit software is lacking because it should be automating the processes for youAfter all, the goal with implementing safety audit software is getting a return on investment by increasing operational efficiency. The digitisation of previously manual processes reduces administration costs and costly, ill-informed decisions due to poor data quality. Furthermore, digitization of safety audits enables quicker turnaround.
- Your safety audit software should have comprehensive reporting abilitiesSafety audit areas include employee knowledge, written program review, program administration, record & document review, and equipment and material safety checks. A good safety audit software will weigh each question and answer and assign it a risk level and consolidate this into a comprehensive report with a click of a button. If you have to rely on paper and pen for any of the process, you’re wasting time and money.The comprehensive report should address all deficiencies and the adequacies of the findings. Furthermore, the report should include recommended and corrective actions for each deficient finding in the audit. The report should be able to be printed or sent in digital format to all supervisors and managers to know the findings of the audit.
The results of poor compliance performance is well known to any industry required to comply with OSHA. Adopting a safety audit software system can make sure your organization’s compliance standards are optimal and is much more efficient than a pen and paper solution. Use these 3 points to make sure your safety audit software isn’t falling short.
