SELF AUDIT POLICY
OSHA’s Voluntary Self-audit Policy is aimed at encouraging employers to maintain safe working environment for their employees among other concerned parties. The main aim of this program is to encourage as many employers as possible to stay committed to maintaining high safety standards within their premises. This policy covers all employers whose businesses have potential negative effects on employees should there be any breach of safety standards.
Among the provisions is the fact that for employers have voluntarily put in place self audit programs; the agency would not by any chance frequently request for these audit repots and that they cannot use such reports as basis of their investigations in the company in order to identify hazards. Accordingly, their investigations would be done independently of the company’s voluntary self-audit programs such any violations recognized are completely different from those identified through the company’s self-audit programs. In case violations are identified through eh company’s self-audit programs; there would be leniency in the penalization of the company.
One of the limitations of this policy is that the audit in question must be voluntary and therefore if this condition is not met; then the case would be treated just like any other case of violation. The risks that a company faces in its commitment to maintaining high safety standards is the fact that the company’s management may just put in place such measures in order to create an impression of trying commitment to safety when in actual sense, little is being done to achieve this objective. This is quite risky because the company’s management may create room for actions that breach safety standards through such measures. Since the agency would be aware that the company’s management has a number of self-audit programs in place; it may relax its examination of the company’s safety standards thus creating room for breaching of safety standards. This would be very costly to the company (CCPS, 2011).
References
Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), (2011) Guidelines for Auditing Process Safety Management Systems Retrieved from: http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=HZ0soPJ6CWAC&pg=PA14&lpg=PA14&dq=limitations+of+OSHA%27s+Voluntary+Self-Audit+Policy.&source=bl&ots=DL5X3RMwXy&sig=Ffr_zrr3XnFx_BWrHYCu1w3lLiI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=QqsuUdXiPIHqrQe54ICIAg&ved=0CGIQ6AEwBg
