Internal Audits are an important part of maintaining your quality management system (QMS) to the requirements of most ISO standards, many regulations and the internal needs of your company. Even though the name may imply that a company needs to have an internal employee perform this role, it is also acceptable (and sometimes preferable) to have an outside consultant come in to perform your internal audits. So, as you consider which approach to take, you’ll want to evaluate some of the benefits of contracting someone else to perform this vital role.
What are the benefits of having a consultant perform your internal audits?
Your initial thought might be that it is critical to have internal personnel trained to perform your internal audits because only an employee can fully understand your processes enough to audit them properly, however there are many potential benefits of hiring an outside consultant to perform your internal audit:
- More Cost Effective:
- Training your own employees to perform internal audits is time consuming, expensive and the outcomes are not guaranteed. Lead auditor courses can cost thousands of dollars (e.g. https://www.orielstat.com/courses/ISO-9001-lead-auditor-training), and classroom training is only the first step. You’ll then need to ensure they get enough practical experience (ideally under the guidance of an experienced auditor) to become an effective. Auditors will also require ongoing training/education to maintain their credentials.
- The time spent qualify internal resources comes at the expense of other business activities where staff might be more effectively utilized.
- The cost of potentially ineffective audits is harder to quantify but a very real cost. Using less experienced auditors can result in potential registrar or regulatory issues and missed opportunities to improve the system.
- More Experienced Auditors Provide Better Recommendations:
- You might think your registrar auditor provides the outside perspective you need. However, it is important to remember they are not permitted to consult as it is viewed as a conflict of interest. Practically, some guidance is often given through OFIs (which is thinly-veiled consulting but that’s a topic for another time) but they can’t provide recommendations best practices or offer solutions to challenges your business is experiencing. This is not the case when you hire a consultant.
- Consultants have likely seen hundreds of other companies and can guide you towards best practices that can drive meaningful improvements in your business and help you get the most from your limited resources. Said another way, if your consultant doesn’t deliver value to you or their other clients, they won’t be in business very long.
- Sometimes avoiding a nonconformance in your certification audit is all about knowing what the registrar will look for. Since good consultants are plugged into registrar and regulatory expectations, they can give you some insight into what might happen when your certification audit happens so that you can fix any issues before the audit takes place.
- Independent Outsiders Can Help Drive Change:
- It is important for the auditors of the internal audit process to be independent from the processes being audited and this is required by most standards and regulations. This can sometimes be difficult while using internal personnel, especially at smaller organizations. With an external consultant, you’ll have no problem demonstrating your auditor is truly independent.
- Office politics, employee relations, and company pressures can sometimes shape what an auditor does or does not find. Using an outside expert for your audits can help ensure audits are truly an objective representation of the state of the system.
- It can hard to see how changes can benefit your processes and process owners can have difficulty accepting issues found by other employees. More specifically, Quality representatives are the most common person to report their concerns fall on deaf ears. Yet time and time again we find greater organizational buy-in for change when issues are identified by an unbiased outside expert.
Decide what is right for you
The best companies all have used or are currently using expert consultants. And by best, we mean that companies that strive to consistently improve over time. The experts they hire use data identify the most value-added recommendations and drive change to the business bottom line justifies their job and fees. All that said, there is still a place and benefits to having internal employees performing their audits. It is important for you to weigh the benefits on both sides to see what is best for your company. You may even want to consider a hybrid approach; using internal personnel and an external expert but that’s a post for another time.
For more on how Quality Auditing LLC can help with your audits visit our website.
