Tip 3 | Transparent Evaluation of Audits

The evaluation of audits delivers invaluable insights that have great potential for improving the decision-making process within an organisation - provided the evaluation process is performed and its outcomes presented in the best way possible.

It is possible, and desirable, to create a tailored evaluation process that fully conforms to the organisation's needs and supports the unique way in which that organisation operates and makes decisions. While simple evaluation methods such as points, penalty points, and grades work well enough in many cases and provide general insights into problem areas, more sophisticated evaluation methods, customised according to the organisation's processes, provide deeper insights that promote strategic thinking and informed decisions. And when the results of such methods are presented in a clear, transparent way, management has everything they need to analyse and ultimately improve the organisation's processes.

Transparency doesn't necessarily start at the evaluation stage, but rather sooner, during the assessment. It is reflected in the auditor's ability to choose with enough confidence the right answer to each audit question, and even to use the most appropriate format for each answer. For example, simple colour-coded answers are a good choice for some questions, but if it would be beneficial to also add a more descriptive answer or a comment, the auditor should be able to do so during the assessment stage. This ability further facilitates transparency during the subsequent evaluation process.

Each transparent evaluation ultimately leads to, ideally, a transparent audit report. By presenting the collected information and calculated results in a targeted, meaningful, and understandable way, it is possible to ensure that each member of the organisation receives everything they need to perform their role successfully.

Individual and transparent audit assessments improve decision-making in organisations through tailored processes and clear presentation of results.

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Enabling the auditor to answer each question with as much detail as required and complete confidence increases the efficiency of the audit and improves the transparency of results.

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Individual Questions & Question Groups

Weighing is a useful way of determining the importance of specific aspects of cleanliness, quality, safety, performance, etc. ahead of the audit. It represents a more sophisticated evaluation method that results in in-depth insights about every audit question. Weighing can be performed at the level of individual questions or question groups, depending on the organisation's needs, and their level of detail can vary. These variables determine the scope of information that will be delivered with the completion of the evaluation.

Calculation

During the evaluation, calculation can be done in several ways, all determined before the start of the audit. Calculation can follow the existing form structure and its results can be presented in a similar way, following the structure of individual questions and question groups in the form used during the audit. While this calculation method is reliable and informative, it is possible to gain even deeper insights by exploring additional dimensions of the form. These additional dimensions are, in fact, specific criteria assigned to the forms regardless of their structure. These criteria allow for the comparison of results across multiple forms and audits. For example, all questions that have the same underlying criterion assigned, so the same 'third dimension', even in different check forms, can be evaluated against each other and presented in the generated audit results. Results calculated based on these additional dimensions bring more transparency and more knowledge to the organisation, greatly increasing the possibility for performance improvement.

Results as Straightforward Calculation

When simplicity and straightforwardness of results are preferred over detailed and in-depth information, evaluation results can simply be presented as a straightforward calculation based on simple evaluation methods. These methods include points, penalty points, or grades assigned to each question. The results are then presented as a simple calculation of the points or grades awarded by the auditor during the audit.

Custom Evaluation Rules

In some cases, it is important for the collected information to be as detailed as possible, and that is when rule-based evaluation comes into play. Rule-based evaluation is a sophisticated evaluation method that involves simple or dependent thresholds, weightings, grading scales, or other methods, depending on the organisation's needs and preferences. The evaluation rules are custom, tailored to the organisation's processes. They are determined well before the audit and are active and automatically followed during the evaluation process. Since the rules are implemented specifically for the organisation in question, rule-based evaluation is an excellent way to acquire valuable insight into the performance of each area of the organisation. This then helps the decision-makers within the organisation to make strategic and data-driven decisions.

acture reduces the workload for the auditor by automatically calculating audit results in the background. Scoring, weightings, and custom evaluation rules enable precise calculation of results tailored to the organisation's needs.

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Transparency of Outcome

As mentioned, transparency of the evaluation process and audit results is crucial, and it couldn't hurt to improve transparency even during the audit and the assessment stage. The auditor should find all questions and the given answers clear and easy to navigate, and they should be able to predict the results based on the selected responses. If all this is the case, during the audit, the auditor is able to see the outcome of the audit and validate it on-site even before the audit results are calculated. 

Results at Multiple Levels

In large organisations, stakeholders at different hierarchical levels have different tasks and require different information to perform those tasks. In order to accommodate those needs and at the same time to prevent information overload at different levels, it is possible to tailor audit results to each recipient. After the audit has been completed and the answers to questions have been evaluated, a multi-level report can be created. Such reports are designed to deliver only those details that the recipient actually needs in a way that is easiest for them to read and understand.

Basis for Future Checks

The most important benefit of transparency is the potential for strategic planning at all levels of the organisation. A straightforward auditing process, easy assessment, and transparent evaluation ultimately reveal trends and the potential for improvement in the organisation. This allows decision-makers to plan repeat audits, determine the best audit intervals, or schedule follow-up checks in order to track the discovered trends and keep an eye on quality and performance throughout the company.