Managers are demanding efficient use of their resources and part
of this demand is leading to the idea of integrated audits for
Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S), quality and the
environment. It is possible to construct audits which test the compliance in
this area with standards established by management systems and
it may be that such an integrated audit of a site could reduce the
time of auditing and be equally effective as three separate audits.
However, this is only a maybe. To do an audit on all three
aspects when they are not fully integrated results in more time
wastage than doing three separate audits. But organisations are not structured around the audit process
(some financial managers may query this statement). The
organisational management systems are put in place to achieve
the organisational goals - presumably in an efficient and
cost-effective manner.