The Benefits of Conducting a Health & Safety Audit

18th June

For every business ensuring the safety of their employees is crucial and they are legally responsible for conducting health and safety audits. These audits help maintain a healthy office environment and promote a positive working vibe. 

However, it is important to know what these health and safety audits are. What are the benefits that we get from these audits? Let’s explore the benefits of audits and why they are important for every company.

What is a Health & Safety Audit?

It is crucial to understand the whole process completely to know about the benefits of these audits. Health and safety audits are primarily conducted to ensure compliance with regulations, identify hazards and also for implementing measures to mitigate against accidents or injuries in the workplace.

There are two ways of conducting these audits: internal and external. 

Internal health and safety audits are conducted by employees within the organisation, often by a dedicated health and safety team or trained staff. These audits focus on identifying risks, ensuring compliance with internal policies, and fostering a culture of safety from within.

External health and safety audits are performed by independent third-party experts or regulatory bodies. These audits provide an unbiased assessment, verify compliance with industry standards and legal requirements, and often carry more weight in demonstrating an organisation's commitment to health and safety.

Importance of Health & Safety Audits

These audits are conducted not just for regulatory purposes but also work as a proactive method of managing risk factors. As discussed, these audits help maintain a healthy and safe working environment ensuring the  wellbeing of the employees and at the same time avoiding any potential legal repercussions.   

Key Components of a Health & Safety Audit

There are several main components of a health & safety audit such as: 

• Documentation: In this process, people review the records before starting the health and safety audit. 
• Assessment of Risk:  Risk assessments are carried out to ensure that any potential safety hazards are identified.
• Policy Review: It is performed to examine the current safety and health policies of a company. 
• Inspection: If there are any safety issues, then it is confirmed through the  initial Health and Safety inspection. 
• Interviews:  Interviews are carried out with employees and management with regard to safe working practices, incidents and any other safety related issues.

The Role of Mobile Form Apps 

Advances in software such as mobile form apps have changed the overall way of conducting these audits. Now the auditors can get real-time information and accurate data collection very easily with the help of mobile form apps. These apps help in making the audits hassle-free and more effective. Auditors can easily collect data, take images, provide comments and generate reports. 

Benefits of Conducting Health & Safety Audits

Enhanced Workplace Safety:

Health and safety audits ensure workplace safety by identifying and mitigating against any safety issues. This helps the employees to work more effectively without any risks and accidents. 

Compliance Assurance

An accurate health and safety audit helps ensure that the business is compliant with  mandatory regulations, and industry standards. Conducting these audits will help reduce legal implications, financial penalties, and potential damage to the company’s reputation. 

Specifies Risks and Hazards

With the help of mobile form apps, these audits help in specifying potential risks and hazards that can cause major issues in the future. Thus, it is very important to identify these risks and address them properly to create a safer working environment at the workplace. 

Improves Employee Morale

It is crucial to maintain a safer workplace that encourages employees to work more efficiently. These audits provide a medium for maintaining a healthy and safe workplace for the organisations that leads to higher job satisfaction for the workers and improves their morale. 

Cost Effectiveness

Carrying out Health and Safety Audits can lead to cost-effectiveness by identifying potential hazards and preventing accidents, thus reducing the likelihood of costly injury claims and legal liabilities. Additionally, maintaining a safe work environment can lower insurance premiums and improve productivity, ultimately saving the organisation money in the long run.

Enhances Organisational Reputation 

Companies that do not provide a positive safe working culture won’t have a good reputation among their employees. But with the help of safety audits and inspections, organisations can improve their reputation among the workforce. With a safer working environment enhancing employee productivity, there is a knock on effect for the business reputation with clients and customers. 

Steps to Conduct a Health & Safety Audit

Proper Preparation and Planning

Planning for a Health and Safety Audit involves scheduling the audit at a convenient time, gathering relevant documents, and informing staff about the process to ensure cooperation. It also includes setting clear objectives and checklists to systematically evaluate all areas of the workplace for compliance and safety standards.

Data Collection

Collecting data for a Health and Safety Audit is streamlined with the NestForms mobile form app. The app allows auditors to easily capture and organise information on-site using customisable digital forms, ensuring accurate and efficient data collection without the hassle of paper forms.

Analysis and Evaluation

Evaluating and analysing Health and Safety audit data collected with the NestForms mobile form app is straightforward and efficient. The app's robust data management features allow for quick synthesis of findings, identification of trends, and generation of comprehensive reports, enabling informed decision-making to enhance workplace safety.

Reporting

Reporting Health and Safety audit data collected with the NestForms mobile form app is efficient and straightforward. The app enables instant generation of detailed reports, which can be easily shared and analysed, ensuring timely communication of findings and recommendations to all relevant stakeholders. 

Implementation of Recommendations

Implement all the suggested measures to overcome the potential risks. This process consists of upgrades in the policies and creating changes in the office environment. Implementing recommendations from Health and Safety audit data collected with the NestForms mobile form app is simple and efficient. The app's detailed reports enable clear identification of issues and actionable steps, facilitating timely improvements and enhancing overall workplace safety.  

Follow Up

It is crucial to confirm that the implementation of recommendations can address the risks. This is done by conducting a follow-up audit that is required to maintain safety regularly. Completing follow-up audits for Health and Safety data is seamless with the NestForms mobile form app. Auditors can quickly access previously collected data, track corrective actions, and ensure that all safety measures are effectively implemented, fostering continuous improvement in workplace safety.

Conclusion

Using a mobile form app for collecting data during a Health and Safety Audit revolutionises the auditing process, making it more efficient, accurate, and instantaneous. With features like real-time data entry, offline capability, and customisable forms, apps like NestForms streamline the workflow, reduce paperwork, and enhance Health and Safety compliance. By adopting this technology, organisations can ensure a safer work environment while saving time and resources, ultimately fostering a culture of continuous safety improvement.

Create your first form using our easy drag-and-drop form builder, share to your colleagues in the field and just watch as the data streams in.

Learn more about how our mobile form app works and get started quickly. Check out how easy it is to use! See one of our example Health and Safety mobile app templates for a Site Safety Inspection.

Try out NestForms and sign up for our free two week trial. During the trial period you can review and test all of the features and modules available to Premium plan. That means everything!

We hope to hear from you soon. All the best from the NestForms team.