To make your internal audits effective, you should:
- develop audit procedures and protocols
- master the overall management of the audit process
- select and carefully train your auditors
- collect the appropriate, relevant evidence and analyse its meaning
- translate your findings into action that will improve performance
The internal audit itself follows the P-D-C-A-cycle: After planning and doing audits, the effectiveness of the audit programme is checked through monitoring and reviewing the audit programme and improved based upon the results (acting).
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The perception of the EMS will be based on the internal audits
Almost everyone in an organisation has been or will be part of an internal audit. As a result, the perception that most employees will have of the EMS will be based on their experience with the auditing procedures and your audit team.
Choose auditors and auditor training carefully. Auditing gets a bad name through bad auditors, not because it is in itself flawed. At its best, auditing can be one of the main contributors to continual improvement.
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Audits can be particularly valuable in smaller organisations, where managers are often so close on the work performed that they may not see problems or bad habits that have developed.
An internal environmental audit should be carried out at regular intervals by selected employees (environmental auditors). If the environmental auditors find something that does not comply with the requirements of the environmental management system (EMS), or something that seems inappropriate, they report on these findings to management.
