The Human Services Professionals

We work for large organisations, so, from time to time, we get audited.

We recognise these audits as an opportunity to tick many boxes relating to our overall compliance, in particular, with respect to risk management.

An auditor is likely to take you through dot points more comprehensive than you can hope to discover on your own steam, and it is usually the case that, even if you've been developing formal processes for years, that an auditor won't come up with at least one dot point that you haven't come across before.

Our approach, in keeping current, compliant and up to date is to act upon every dot point that an auditor (or anyone else, for that matter) raises.

This approach does tend to tick unticked boxes, even as the auditor is preparing his or her report, but this is overriden by the imperative that if an option for better quality is brought to our attention, then we have no choice or wish other than to act on it immediately, and in that way, incrementally improve our quality and service.

On a lighter note, a member of our team once commented that to not act on recommendations for better quality, particularly during an audit, would make one "a turkey who's just discovered what Thanksgiving is all about, and doubting whether he should go on a diet".