The competitive character trait in human nature can start at a young age, and become especially evident when there is an older sibling involved. This trait often grows during schooling and is fostered through sporting and academic endeavours. Some patriotic folk would probably argue that Australians are the most competitive people in the world, considering the old analogy of betting on 2 flies as they walk up a wall.
Sometimes this ‘national’ character trait can be a negative … All too often we come across organisations with such an engrained level of competitiveness that an internal or external audit process becomes a game of one-upping the competing business units, which can undermine the positives to be gained from the audit process.
Friendly competition is good and healthy, but when it comes to audits there are a couple of things that we need to remember.
Audits are inherently designed to call a spade a spade, based on the information gleaned from the audit process – from the discussions with management & the workers, from the field inspections process, and from the review of the documented information. There is little benefit in comparing one business unit (let’s call them the ‘100% Apple Juice’ company) who has a specific series of workplace risks and challenges, an SMS designed to help them manage these risks and challenges with another business unit (let’s call them the ‘Orange Juice rulz’ company) who have a different factory site, different seasonal suppliers, arguably better juicing equipment, and a more bespoke SMS to help them manage their risks and challenges.
Despite this, putting an audit score to an audit process is like waving a red flag to a bull. It often triggers the all-too-human desire to undertake comparisons, without taking the appropriate 2 steps back to look at the context. It furthermore puts the focus primarily on the score instead of on the corrective action processes to ensure non-conformances are addressed.
Let’s put some context around our hypothetical juice companies that were hypothetically audited. Say the ‘100% Apple Juice’ company was audited as they were mid-way through a site management change, and there was a significant incident on the site 2 days ago. Whereas the ‘Orange Juice rulz’ company currently has stability at site and in their SMS, and had their audit on a good day where everything went to plan.
Everything comes back to context when considering the two audit outcomes … how can we reasonably compare apples and oranges?
Perhaps the more beneficial process would be to consider where we are now, where we came from (since last audit) and where we need to get to.
Arguably the more productive approach would be the concept of progression and comparison with self, rather than comparison to another entity; and taking a focus on fixing what was reported rather than looking at a score.
Please contact QRMC for more information.
