Safety audit may apply similar methodologies used in financial audits to mitigate safety risks within any facility or operation. A sound business enterprise must check its safety practices as carefully as its accounting records.
The debits of possible loss or injury situations should balance against the credits of adequate safeguards. Audits evaluate all aspects of the program with special emphasis on the quality as well as the quantity of safety and health activities at every level. The basic goal of an audit is to verify that health and safety activities comply with institutional policies and federal, state, and local regulations.
Safety audits are report cards on the success of safety and health programs, environmental programs, and process safety management. A safety audit is a structured, methodical assessment and evaluation of how workplace activities affect safety and health. Its goal is to ensure a safe and healthy workplace by striving to eliminate unsafe practices and hazards that lead to injuries and accidents.
The Safety Audit is an interdisciplinary self-assessment tool, so the work is conducted by a community team of domestic violence experts and key workers who represent the systems that are being examined. Team members collect data and meet as a group to discuss the Audit findings; recommend changes in policy, procedure, and training; strategize how to implement the recommended changes; and help implement, monitor, and evaluate the changes over time.
To this end the followings are the outcomes of a Safety Audit:
- Discovering gaps in safety and accountability within the case processing systems under review, i.e., answering the “Audit question.”
- Specific recommendations for system change that enable community partners to close the discovered gaps.
- New expertise in a process that can be used for ongoing community planning, evaluation, and problem-solving.
- New ways of community partners to work together.
We at NIFS have a team of highly experienced safety professionals who conduct safety audits of miscellaneous organizations on request. The reports prepared by us are highly admired by managements as well as the statutory authorities.
