Safety Auditing in the Solar Industry, Some things to think about?

What is an Audit?

An Audit, at its basic level, is a review of activity against specified criteria.

E.g., if you set out to use a Panel lifter and it is taking a long time to set up or doesn’t match the structure, we look to gain understanding to achieve an improvement in the system to achieve the same safety standard.

In this section, we want to talk about some areas in Audit that we feel are worth thinking about…

Pre-audit agreement

Before audits occur, what rarely happens. to get buy-in, is agreement about what is going to be reviewed and that we are both happy of what we are going to be compared against.

Psychological safety and also working ‘with’ in an overt way and clarity on the whole process is important.

Purpose of Audit

Generally, audits are to give feedback of what is working and what not is working and to understand why through the journey of the audit the goal of a high-quality auditor is to add value to the auditee.

Desire for improvement

A critical first step of any audit is for the Auditee to want to improve and receive feedback. Preparation is important for a positive response and in some cases should not be done in certain circumstances. E.g. where system are too new, workers are really struggling in their current position and do not want to go through the process. Pull over push is important and ensuring that the fundamentals are O.K.

Ideal versus possible

In certain cases, Audits will bring up lots or areas to improve which don’t all make the improvement plan.

Focusing on the vital few, the 20% that improves the 80% is important and You3 have a system for this. We believe that solid, small, incremental change project to project is key.

Justification of results versus Extreme Ownership

Quality Feedback can be minimised, dismissed or justified rather than owned. It can happen with highly skilled professionals and also with staff who really don’t want to get the feedback due to knowing it is not really valued by leadership or they feel or actually don’t have the resources to make changes.

Understanding the ecosystem of the business, personalities and values is important.

Sensemaking of results and way forward

Post audit review with the team and management to make sense of the results and review what is important Is essential and not always done that well. Often leadership only are briefed.

Presentation of results

Research has shown that using traffic lights works better than iterating something that is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Large Volumes of feedback is not well received and also if trends are not mapped then it is hard to get a grasp on any improvement plans.

Being realistic about resources and re-prioritisation

Staff are waking up each day wanting to do their best and are prioritising what is important based on a number of factors, through a quality audit process it must be recognised what and when things can be improved and what are the effects of changing focus.

Edward Foord is a Sustainability Strategist at Brisbane’s You3. He has 14 years of national and international experience with large and small businesses.

What is an Audit?

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