How Routine Internal Audits Can Help Boost Business Performance
The nature of business management has been subject to great change over our transition from the information age through to the digital age. For starters, managing a modern business typically requires business owners to maintain a certain level of technological proficiency. Alongside this, business owners are also now expected to maintain a whole systems understanding of their operational processes, even across departments that they don’t oversee directly.
So how can modern business owners stay on top of their company’s operational processes whilst still maintaining a big picture approach to managing their business growth? The answer is by conducting routine internal audits.
Unlike external audits which are carried out by third parties, internal business audits involve certified members of your staff evaluating your company’s operational processes and how they impact the overall performance of your workforce and wider enterprise. Members of your staff can become qualified internal auditors by completing internationally recognised ISO training courses that maintain a focus on conducting internal audits.
But internal audits can provide more benefits than just keeping you afloat of business operational processes or upskilling opportunities for your employees. Here are just some of the other ways that routine internal audits can positively impact your business and boost its performance in the long run.
Provides employees with structure and direction
As we mentioned earlier, conducting internal audits can provide members of your staff with the unique opportunity to gain auditing skills and learn a little bit more about ISO standards like ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems or ISO 27001 Information Security Management Systems – two of the more prominent ISO certifications that you’ll be likely to see in any growth-oriented organisation.
Internal audits also provide employees with valuable objective insights into how their departments and wider workplace operates in juxtaposition to internationally recognised standards. Having a solid template upon which your employees can further develop their own unique processes can naturally provide your workforce with a lot of innate structure and direction. This can be infinitely valuable for small businesses in particular who may lack the resources to adequately invest in their own development.
Ensures time allocated for business development strategising
As findings from internal audits can be utilised by staff to develop company processes, business owners are free to keep their focus on long term business development strategising. But this isn’t to say that your staff will be able to take full control over the management of your day-to-day operations whilst you solely focus on big picture thinking. On the contrary, ensuring that your staff maintain a solid understanding of your business processes, why they’re set up the way that they are, and how they relate to your wider business development and performance goals, then you as a business owner can benefit from all your employees being on the same page with regards to business growth.
In other words, your staff may be in the very same mindset as you when it comes to business development strategising – all because they were involved in the process of conducting internal audits and have a working understanding of how your business is looking to amend its processes and operations to accommodate future growth.
With this information on hand, employees can have just as much of a say in larger scale business development strategising as their supervisors and you, their employer. And you may find yourself pleasantly surprised by the ideas that your staff come to you with thanks to all of the operational knowledge and company insights they’ve retained from your company’s internal audits. You never know what kind of dynamic development strategies you’ll be able to create for your business with a diverse and dedicated workforce at your disposal.
Helps develop risk identification and mitigation methodologies
Of course, the primary reason why businesses invest in internal audits is simply to identify any potential risk factors before they have the opportunity to do any real damage to your business. Staying on top of the risks that plague your business and wider industry is crucial to not only developing new operational processes, but maintaining the strong processes you currently have in place.
Business risks can be anything from data security concerns to gaps in communication or processes between departments. Oftentimes, business owners may think that they have a strong awareness of the risks facing their business only to discover a handful of other risks in the results of their first internal audit.
If you have found risks that have flown under the radar until very recently, naturally your priority as a future-oriented business owner will be to invest in risk mitigation processes and methodologies that your staff can use in the long term. It’s recommended that you work with your staff to establish these risk mitigation processes and to train other employees on best practices for managing business risks.
Improve relationships with company stakeholders
Finally, conducting routine internal audits and presenting the findings from these audits at stakeholder meetings can provide reassurance to company stakeholders that your business is being managed to an exceptional standard. If you’re able to gain the trust of your stakeholders as a business owner, you’ll find that securing resources or approval for acting on business growth opportunities is accompanied with a lot less red tape, which can only be a benefit for both yourself and your wider management team.
Alongside ensuring strong relationships with existing stakeholders, conducting routine internal audits and maintaining clear records of findings and action taken following past audits, can help attract additional investors, collaborators, and even buyers for your business. So whether you’re looking to sell your company, or grow for the future, investing in routine internal audits will highly likely provide a strong ROI.
~
It’s clear to see why many business owners are integrating routine internal audits into their business’ quarterly calendar. The benefits of audits truly do speak for themselves. The insights that can be generated from conducting departmental and company-wide audits simply cannot be gleaned as promptly in any other capacity. So provide your company and all of its employees with the opportunity to experience these advantages for themselves. It may just be what you need to consolidate your enterprise as a fixture in its industry.