Handling External Audits with Internal Vacations

[noboost4you]

This August is our external (registration) audit. During the week they'll be here, a couple department supervisors will be on vacation. Both supervisors are the only personnel in their department, such as our Engineering department.

At this point, only the Engineering manager knows where everything is electronically; we really don't keep many hardcopy Engineering files. How can we succeed with this audit without rescheduling and still allowing their vacations?

 

[somerqc]

We handle that very simple. No vacations during week of audit, unless approved by President.

We have allowed vacations during an audit, but, not for key people. We have also worked with our auditor to have the area in question audited early (or late) to ensure we can succeed and the person can make their flight.

Remember, an auditor MAY (not will) take this type of thing as a lack of commitment by management. He/She may not write it up that way, but the optics are not positive.

John

 

[noboost4you]

Vacation was approved well before the audit was ever scheduled. Audit was originally scheduled in mid-July but there was more scheduling conflicts.

What if the Engineering manager would leave notes where to find information? What could the auditor ask of him that cannot be learned by other personnel just for that week?

 

[HSSE Auditor]

Vacation was approved well before the audit was ever scheduled. Audit was originally scheduled in mid-July but there was more scheduling conflicts.

What if the Engineering manager would leave notes where to find information? What could the auditor ask of him that cannot be learned by other personnel just for that week?

Maybe as a preventative action, someone should coordinate scheduling the audit with the auditor and the auditee. It doesn't sound like a large company, so it should not be difficult.

 

[noboost4you]

Maybe as a preventative action, someone should coordinate scheduling the audit with the auditor and the auditee. It doesn't sound like a large company, so it should not be difficult.

Are you suggesting bringing in the auditor before the scheduled audit just to go through one department? That doesn't seem cost effective...

 

[SteelMaiden]

reschedule the audit, if the auditor was the first to ask for a change, they will usually try to work something out to meet your schedule, in my experience. (never accept a scheduling change without first checking availability of the players) If there is no way to reschedule have the person(s) who are scheduled for vacation to appoint someone to stand in for them. one of these options should work for you.

 

[HSSE Auditor]

Are you suggesting bringing in the auditor before the scheduled audit just to go through one department? That doesn't seem cost effective...

Not at all. Just effective planning. You said up there that the audit is in August and that the folks had already planned vacation. If these folks are so important to the audit, why didn't you schedule it when they weren't on vacation?

 

[noboost4you]

Unfortunately July-August-September are the peak vacation months around here and most of them have been approved since the beginning of the year. One things for sure, we will not refuse vacations to ruin morale.

Say the Engineering manager were to appoint someone to stand in for them, there's no possible way of knowing all that he knows. What kind of information would an auditor ask of from the Engineering manager?

Basically comes down to not being able to reschedule the audit and not refusing vacations.

 

[ScottK]

Part of being a manager is handling this sort of thing. Sometimes vacations have to be rescheduled, sometimes audits have to be rescheduled. Part of being a professional (the engineering manager) is accepting that sometimes you may have to change (change, not drop altogether) plans for work priorities.
seems to me 4 months is plenty of time to reschedule a vacation for something as important as a registration audit.

We are also having a registration audit (ISO9001) in August and all management has been told that no vacation will be approved for that week. In addition I have notified my staff that I will not approve vacation for the week prior.
The owner rescheduled some vacation time because of this.

 

[Benjamin28]

I understand the hesitation to cancel your supervisors' vacation time, but truthfully if you believe there will be hiccups in the audit because of their absence, you should probably rethink this.

As to your question, will notes work? That's a question that only you can answer, is there no one else who works closely enough with the supervisors to know where to find all the information required?

If it were me I would sit the supervisors down, have them reschedule their vacation time and offer some kind of "sorry about this" incentive for doing so.