With every new year comes a new set of market conditions, law changes and industry regulations, making annual compliance audits an absolute must for any successful business. Taking time in the early months to assess your standard operating procedures and policies and make any necessary changes will ensure your business remains compliant with legal and industry regulations and set up for continued success and growth.
While compliance audits are often viewed as box-ticking exercises, there’s plenty more to be gained from the practice beyond staying on the right side of the law. Addressing – or simply just looking for – areas of non-compliance will encourage you to contemplate your processes and procedures to ensure they are as effective and efficient as possible. In much the same vein, compliance audits are an excellent opportunity to improve decision-making within your business – an area with the potential to deliver a significant boost to morale and productivity.
I’m an advocate for getting employees involved in audits too, by seeking their feedback and involving them in any changes; doing so can turn a run-of-the-mill job to be done into a transformative moment for your business.
So, with so much to gain, what’s the best way to get started?
1. Determine the scope of your audit: This includes identifying the laws, regulations and standards that apply to your business, as well as the areas of business you intend for the audit to cover. For example, you may choose to focus on a specific department, or conduct an audit of the whole organisation.
2. Gather information: The next step is to gather information about your business processes, policies, and procedures. This includes reviewing documentation, such as contracts, agreements, and employee handbooks, as well as speaking with employees who may be involved in the audit process.
3. Develop a checklist: This list should be comprehensive, covering all the areas of your business that are included in the scope of the audit. This checklist should include questions about whether your business is operating in compliance with relevant laws and regulations, as well as questions about the efficacy of your processes and procedures.
4. Conduct your audit: With your checklist in hand, you are now ready to conduct your audit. This will likely involve reviewing documents, interviewing employees, and observing processes.
5. Analyse and document your results: This will involve reviewing the evidence you collected during your audit and comparing it to the requirements outlined in your checklist. I recommend also looking for patterns in the results, such as areas where compliance is consistently lacking. Document your findings in a report that includes a description of the audit process, a summary of the results, and recommendations for improvement. Keep it concise, easy to understand, and actionable!
6. Action necessary changes: This may involve updating policies and procedures, providing additional training to employees, or taking other actions to ensure that your business is operating in compliance with the laws and regulations that apply to it.
Need some professional guidance?
If you’d like some help setting yourself up for an audit or would like an independent audit conducted on your behalf, please feel free to get in touch. Our initial chat is always free, and if you decide you’d like some independent, impartial, and up-to-date support, you can make use of our qualified HR expertise for as little as an hour, or as long as you’d like. It’s up to you.