What is an audit?

The word audit stems from the Latin verb audine, which means to hear. Although financial audits are a well established part of the management systems in most companies, the most progressive companies are now utilising audits to check compliance to a requirement of standard and secondly to determine the adequacy of a product or service to satisfy the demands of customers or other key groups.

There are satisfaction, communication, climate and cultural surveys. Sometimes, they are called "assessments" or  "instruments" or "audits" or just "surveys". We are going to refer to organisational surveys, which is a more comprehensive description. Some organisational surveys are designed to collect information about a single, specific topic; others are more global in nature.

What to expect from an organisational survey

While organisational surveys are important parts of process improvement, their success depends on understanding how to use them effectively.

An organisational survey can be a very powerful tool resulting in the following benefits:

• Identifies opportunities for improvement
• Provides a reality check
• Determines whether a strategy is outdated and needs to change
• Measures performance improvements
• Helps to change the mind-set of managers
• Increases the commitment of people in the organisation

Some of our recent customers are: