Why are EHS Audits important?
Regular assessment and evaluation of your policies and procedures is a key part of your health and safety responsibilities. Carrying out an EHS Audit is important, whether on a voluntary or mandatory basis, in conjunction with a government or industry body.
EHS Audits can shed light on problems or hazards that were previously unnoticed, allowing you to mitigate the risks posed before they become a material danger. By regularly identifying improvement opportunities through EHS Audits, you can ensure that your teams are working safely and your equipment is safe for use – helping to improve efficiency and productivity. Carrying out an EHS Audit will also demonstrate that you are actively taking steps to comply with industry regulations.
What are the benefits of conducting EHS Audits?
Undertaking EHS Audits is an excellent way to identify and manage risk in the workplace. When hazards are highlighted in an EHS Audit, you can take steps to proactively manage the level of risk presented and better protect your employees while they are at work. This in turn helps to raise employees’ awareness around hazards and health and safety in general, as well as helping to avoid potential financial or reputational losses if something like a RIDDOR incident occurs.
Additionally, an EHS Audit demonstrates your commitment to compliance with legal standards and regulations in your industry. This highlights the ways that you are focused on protecting your people’s health and wellbeing, as well as the longevity and sustainability of your organisation as a whole. Conducting regular EHS Audits will boost your company’s internal and external reputation, strengthening your relationships with your employees, your contractors, your customers and other stakeholders.
On a similar note, documenting and sharing the results of your EHS Audits regularly can help to foster a culture of transparency and collaboration between your workforce. You can demonstrate accountability and openness by sharing what you have learned and the changes that you have implemented through your EHS Audits. This builds trust, fosters open communication and ultimately can improve your standing with both your internal stakeholders and wider industry bodies.
Finally, regularly carrying out EHS Audits underlines the importance of ongoing evaluation. By establishing your commitment to continuous learning and improvement in the workplace, you will help improve your organisation’s overall health and safety culture. Involving your employees in the EHS Audit process is key to this. When your staff can see that their first-hand experience and suggestions are being listened to and implemented, they will become more invested in taking proactive steps to maintain and improve safe working practices. This process of regularly analysing your audit findings and making positive changes will also improve your EHS Audits over time, helping you to minimise risk, improve efficiency and even save money.

What are the types of EHS Audits?
There are three main types of EHS Audits that you might expect to conduct within your organisation. The most common is a compliance audit, which focuses on how your organisation complies with the legal requirements and regulations set out by the HSE and your relevant industry body. This type of audit aims to review your existing policies and safety procedures to ensure they are compliant. Once this Audits has been completed, you can review and then take steps to make any necessary changes and improvements.
The second type of EHS Audit is a safety audit. The purpose of a safety audit is to identify and assess hazards in the workplace and to manage or remove any risks that are highlighted. This can be done by improving working practices, implementing regular safety checks or conducting staff training – either internally or via IOSH, for example. Make sure to involve your employees in a safety audit; this way you will be able to gather more accurate, ‘on the ground’ information about the day-to-day health and safety in your workplace so you can make impactful, immediate change.
Thirdly, you can carry out an environmental audit. Separate from a safety audit, an environmental audit looks at the environmental hazards that your employees may be exposed to at work. Depending on the sector you work in, this can include physical hazards like exposure to loud noise, trip hazards, extreme temperatures or poor air quality, and chemical hazards like corrosive substances or radioactive materials. The purpose of an environmental audit is to establish processes that reduce the risk posed by these hazards and lessen their impact on the environment and your workforce.
What are some of the most common challenges you might face when Auditing?
As with many organisation- or department-wide initiatives, carrying out an EHS Audit can come with some challenges. The most common challenges that you might face when carrying out your EHS Audit are a lack of resources / time to effectively carry out the Audit, a lack of understanding when it comes to industry regulations and requirements, a lack of employee engagement or the ability to collate consistent and accurate Audit information from your teams. Though these challenges are common, there are still steps you can take to overcome them. Audits of any kind are resource-heavy and you may find that you don’t have the time, staff or finances to complete a comprehensive audit. If this sounds familiar, that doesn’t mean you should abandon your EHS Audits altogether. Instead, consider prioritising the kind of audits you need to carry out based on the levels of risk in your organisation and work towards building capacity to carry out a full audit in time. Alternatively, if your pressure points are time and staffing, but not finances, you might want to outsource and hire an EHS consultant. Perhaps the most accessible and cost-effective way to improve the efficiency of your EHS Audits is to make use of digital tools – but more on that later! Another common challenge that can hinder the effectiveness of your Audits is a lack of understanding when it comes to industry compliance. Maintaining an in-depth understanding of legislation and industry standards is crucial to undertaking an effective EHS audit. This can be particularly challenging when the regulatory landscape is constantly changing or if your organisation is based in more than one country where legal requirements may be different. Again, you may want to consider hiring an EHS consultant to support you with your audit but you should also be making regular efforts to stay on top of industry regulations to avoid non-compliance or gaps in your processes. Websites such as the HSE, SHP and IOSH can also help to keep you abreast of the latest regulations.
A third challenge that you may face is a lack of employee engagement. Proactive, empowered employees are key to a thriving workplace health and safety culture. If your teams don’t feel like they have the information they need or their concerns aren’t listened to, they are less likely to want to play an active role in ensuring safety standards are met. To combat this, you should make sure to involve staff in the EHS Audit process. This could look like asking them to carry out a checklist or an inspection in their area of work, or on a piece of equipment they regularly use. Asking them what training they feel they need or making sure that the process of auditing is easy and accessible is also really important to ensure you get accurate and consistent data, when you need it.
5 steps to help you prepare for an EHS Audit
Now you have a good understanding of what an EHS Audit is and why it is beneficial for you, your employees and your organisation. Before you start the EHS Audit, here are five steps you should take to ensure your audit is effective.
Decide on the focus and scope of your Audit
As we know, there are different types of EHS Audit that you might want to conduct. Before you start, decide on what area(s) of your organisation you need to assess, or what equipment. This includes considering who will be involved, how the audit will be recorded, the timescale of the whole process and who is responsible for any follow-up actions.
Identify the specific regulations you must comply with
If you begin your audit with a good understanding of your legal obligations and what industry standards must be met, you will be able to carry out a more effective Audit. This is especially important if your last EHS Audit was a long time ago. This is a good opportunity to share any regulatory updates with your team to ensure that everyone has a clear understanding of the standards they are working towards ahead of the Audit too.
Gather all relevant documentation
Having the relevant documents and information to hand throughout the audit will make the whole process easier. As well as safety manuals and reporting documents, make sure you gather information about recent staff training, new contractors and any incident reports (including any hazards and / or near misses) relevant to the areas you are auditing. By reviewing your existing bank of health and safety data alongside information highlighted during the Audit, you can quickly spot trends and identify where improvements may need to be made.
Provide the auditors with the correct safety equipment and training
Whoever is responsible for carrying out your EHS Audit needs to be able to do so safely. Whether they are internal team members or external Audit consultants, providing the Audit team with appropriate information, training and any necessary PPE to move through your workplace is crucial to carrying out their assessments. The time needed to brief or train your Audit team should be included in the scope of the whole audit, so make sure your plan includes this.
Communicate with your teams about the Audit
A comprehensive EHS Audit can be disruptive, albeit temporarily. Employees may need to adjust their working patterns or priorities to contribute to the Audit. Collecting the relevant documents and information from each department will take some time. Those in the Audit team may need to delegate their usual responsibilities for the duration of the Audit. Make sure you tell your teams about any upcoming Audit in advance and give them plenty of time to ask questions and make adjustments to their work. Ensuring you have an audit schedule in place and sharing it with your teams can help mitigate any potential disruption.
How often should EHS Audits be performed?
There is no global standard for how often EHS Audits should be carried out, so your audit schedule will depend on the size of your organisation and the overall risk level associated with your industry. If you work in a higher-risk industry like construction, you will likely want to carry out an EHS Audit more often than an organisation that is solely office-based, for example.
That said, EHS Audits should follow a regular schedule regardless of industry or the size of your company. Whether ‘regular’ means annually or every three months, leaving too long a gap between Audits can put your employees and your organisation at risk. To ensure that safety guidance and procedures are being followed, consider what supporting actions you can take to ensure your teams are working safely between Audits. This might include implementing daily safety checks, carrying out weekly site inspections or encouraging weekly team feedback to ensure that issues are dealt with there and then, rather than waiting for a more comprehensive Audit.

How can EHS Audit Software help?
Conducting an effective EHS Audit should be thorough and thought-out but it doesn’t need to be complicated or time-consuming. With the right software to help, you can be sure that your EHS Audits are carried out on time, and to the right stand.
Notify Technology’s Audit Management software allows you to create, customise and complete Audits digitally, removing the need for time consuming paper audits, manual checklists or complicated spreadsheets. With our native mobile app, anyone in your organisation can easily carry out an EHS Audit on or offline, from any location and custom visibility rules mean that Auditors only see the questions they need to complete – helping to improve engagement. QR code functionality also means that Auditors can carry out equipment checks in real time.
Your teams can update their findings remotely and also include photos to illustrate their findings to help provide context and support compliance. You can also assign specific tasks and follow-up actions to team members and track their progress to ensure that any identified hazards or potential risks are mitigated as soon as possible.
With Notify’s Audit scheduling tools, you don’t have to worry about remembering key dates, when your last audit was, or if an Audit has been completed after a job for example.
Thanks to built-in email notifications and reminders, you and your team can stay on top of EHS Audits with ease.
Paper audits make it difficult to visualise any Audit data. Notify’s Safety Intelligence Audit tracking dashboard allows you to see all of your completed, in-progress and overdue audits, and any outstanding actions, in one place. With this comprehensive overview, you can visualise, analyse and track your safety data. You can filter by Audit category, department or site, and easily spot trends and risks before they lead to anything more serious such as an accident.
“Notify is simple and intuitive to use,” says Greg Webb, Risk and Compliance Manager from Product Care Group. “Audit planning is a doddle, as is setting up template forms and dependable questions…Notify also has clearly presented dashboards that allow us to easily interrogate and drill down into data.”
To find out more about how our software helped to improve Product Care Group’s audit processes and the other ways that Notify Technology can support your health and safety management, get in touch for your free trial today.