Nitpicking during site safety audits
What's your approach to running safety audits in your building? Do you nitpick, or just identify the major stuff?
I think the benefit to nitpicking is that you set a higher standard for your workplace, but you may aggravate your people, plus you create more work that could potentially come back to bite you if things don't get closed out.
I typically try and find a balance, but wanted to hear some other thoughts.
Comments (8)
As the Safety manager I viewed formal internal audits as my opportunity to raise the bar higher than the regulatory auditor. As a department manager I viewed my daily engagements in my areas and with my team members as an opportunity to raise the bar higher than the Safety Manager.
Stricter than OSHA
I think it’s a good practice to nitpick during a formal audit, and then close all minor findings by end of day.
Nitpicking during more frequent informal audits is less productive and just serves to irritate people. Those “small” items should be handled by the supervisor during normal course of business. Maybe just try dropping hints about the minor items and see if they get corrected.
I agree with Andrew re: audits. If it is an audit, we are looking for everything. Random or quarterly inspections result in gentler findings.
The point of an official audit is to nit-pick the littlest things. If I'm doing doing a standard walk around I'll address the fix important things, and set reminders to work on the little things.