Hey there I'm welcome back to Best Practice TV in this episode we're
talking about our top tips for internal auditing part of your management system
whether it's quality safety environment the data security or even food safety
something really exciting a couple of our top tips. A number of our YouTube
videos have performed really well so we're going to give you more stay tuned
Thanks for joining us our internal auditor top tips video has been quite
popular on our youtube channel so we thought we'd do a little refresher and
we'll throw it in the play list and we've got a couple of top tips so the first is
I guess lots of people ask us questions on how do I start how do I get going
with my internal audits and probably the most important thing to remember is the
internal audits are part of the checking process or part of the review process
but more importantly not what process they're part of but what is the
objective and the objective is to fundamentally use it as an improvement
tool so to identify opportunities for improvement to help you sort of
prioritize what you're going to work on so for example if you were going to the
gym and doing exercise then there might be a couple of key areas that are your
weaknesses that you're going to work on and that's sort of the result of maybe a
self-assessment. So an internal audits like a self-assessment but the real
value comes from when you're working in a team so the top tip would be think
about the fact that it's to identify opportunities for improvement identify
gaps then the second tip is about doing it in a team or certainly in a
partnership so who are the people in your organization that you could speak
with or spend time with and start to review what they're doing and help them
to identify opportunities for improvement. So you as the internal
auditor doing the review asking the questions and those guys really thinking
about what they could do to improve so a good question is what are the sorts of
things that we could look at or work on it that are really going to improve our
customer service. What are the sorts of things that upset our customers and
are things that we could prioritize to really get a lot of benefit out of our
quality management system so there's a couple of examples of how we could
unpack and identify some opportunities for improvement as part of an internal
audit process. So tip number three it's about the comparison the comparison of
what the organization said you would do and then what is
actually happening what you're observing so as the internal auditor it's about
observing it's about looking using their ears using your eyes to actually look
and observe and understand and get a good clear picture of what the
organization is doing and in comparison to the guidance. So if again if I you
give you a quick example we might have a policy or procedure about how we take
orders or how we talk to our customers or communicate with our customers and
understand what their order is or what their need is or what their scope is or
what their requirements are and then we might start to roll out that process so
if they want a particular service or product delivered on a particular time
for a particular cost and a particular quantity how does that roll through the
organization so as the auditor it's about observing so what was written down
and what is being delivered and and you're identifying fundamentally if
there's a match or a mismatch so the audit is sitting on the fence so
observing what you said you would do and sitting on the fence. Top tip four is this
concept of sitting on the fence. So it's about being impartial and not conveying
your opinion even verbally but more importantly not with your body language
so if you're like if you see something going on in your you know oh my god
what's going on then you're starting to pass judgment and it's really important
to try and be very impartial and sit on the fence because all you're looking for
is what was what the organization said they would do and what's going on and is
there a match or a mismatch so that's top tip number four. Top tip number five
is to just keep it simple really simple it's about going out into your
organization and asking the question show me. So spending time with your
organization and saying can you show me what you do and I'll follow it in the
processes that we've defined so if you've got pictures or work instructions
or policies or procedures you're asking your team the people you're working with
to say just show me I'm going to follow you do what you got to do you do the
processes you understand it and show me what you're doing and then I'll follow
it in the instructions that have been captured and so just keeping it really
really simple and top tip number six and that's the last tip is don't make them
too long and my fundamental recommendation when you're getting
started and you trying to work out what to do it's just
keep it to an hour. So divide the hour into three parts 20 minutes to prepare
20 minutes to go and spend some time with your colleagues in the organization
talking and interviewing and observing and 20 minutes to consolidate your
thoughts and maybe write a little list of the things that you saw that could be
improved, opportunities for improvement. Now the last thing about the internal
audit process is that's one step of the business improvement cycle and the
internal audits might feed into an improvements register, a non-conformance
register, corrected preventative action register, opportunity to improvement
register any of those sorts of things and that in turn feeds in to management
review. That's all how it all connects together now the great thing about
internal audits and what we do here at best practice is we've got a great
course and there's lots of great videos here obviously on our YouTube channel
we do do webinars from time to time but we have got a great course so jump
across into our training portal and we can take you through a internal auditor
training course give you all of our top tips and tricks that have been assembled
from all the great team here at Best Practice and if you have got a question
to comment below on this video there's more content that you want to see
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see you soon next time on Best Practice TV bye for now.