When it comes to managing a team or workplace environment, safety is of the utmost importance. A big part of making sure everyone stays safe and healthy while at work is conducting regular audits. You are likely required to perform a certain number of audits per year or project—maybe you’re even legally required to audit every day—but you might want to conduct more than the bare minimum to help reduce risks to people’s health and safety.
Because of the importance of safety audits, new software has become available on the market that helps managers, supervisors, and auditors conduct safety audits as efficiently as possible. The goal is to minimize the loss of productive time throughout the workday when the audit is being completed. The following will explore some of the features of audit management software in detail so that you can decide whether this type of software is right for you and your business’s safety needs.
Devices And Paper
One of the most straightforward benefits of using audit management software is the way audits, inspections, and checklists can be accessed and completed from any computer or mobile device. The data is then saved in a database allowing people to check up on the completion of audits and note any red flags. This can save a lot of time and paper as you and everyone else isn’t required to leaf through physical files the way they once were—reducing paper usage has several positive effects on businesses. Digital storage allows for instant sharing and is far easier to back up than paper copies of audits.
Include Additional Comments And Photos
Sometimes checking a box isn’t enough in the middle of a safety audit. You or your supervisors might want to include photographs or specific comments as you audit your safety practices and environment. Audit management software makes it easy to include these things digitally so that photos don’t need to be developed and printed, and stored in binders. A photo off of a phone or other digital device can be included in the audit report whenever necessary.
Scheduling Audits And Offering Notifications
Another benefit of audit management software is the ability managers have to schedule audits and set notifications for themselves or other team members. Notifications can mean the difference between forgetting an important audit or finding a moment to squeeze it in during one of those hectic days where everything was delivered to the wrong place (and not the same wrong place either) and three people are out sick and the client is arriving in ten minutes.
Efficient Audit Approval
If your workplace requires a lot of auditing, you can bet that it also involves a lot of audit approval. The process of approving audits can be streamlined by audit management software because people are able to see all the relevant information in a single space. A manager can search audits by a supervisor, observation, or other factors allowing them to get the information they need as quickly as possible. Managers are able to see when an audit was not done. Managers can even score audits so that supervisors and inspectors know what needs to be improved in the auditing process.
Customize Auditing Forms
Depending on the type of business you own or manage, you might be wondering if audit management software could be applied to your particular work and the type of risks in your environment. Auditing management software allows managers to create their own auditing forms using a variety of question types (multiple-choice, true/false, safe/at risk, on a sliding scale between 1 and 5 or 1 and 10, and types responses) to make sure that all your bases are covered. If you are unsure about the specific type of information you need to include in your audits and whether software could include it, reach out to an audit management software provider.
The above information explores some of the benefits of including audit management software into your daily, weekly, or monthly workflow. We all know how vital safety audits and investigations are, yet it can be hard to manage them and stay on top of all the teeny data points we collect throughout the day. One of the ways to smooth out the process and save all the relevant information in one space is through audit management software.
If you decide to go with an EHS software like this, be sure to ask your provider how data is backed up and what policies and procedures they have in place to help protect the valuable data you store in their system from cybercrime.
