Auditing a company's stated values

S

selena15

#1
Hi Cove
here we are long time
i've missed the cove :)
i get a question
companies use to have some values that they say they are committed to. aditionaly to the quality objectives such as , corporate responsibly, team spirit, HR well trained ...blabla
are that kind of value auditable ?

and in this case How ? which kind of checklist can be established to this kind of audit
:thanx: in advance
Selena
 
Elsmar Forum Sponsor
#2
Hi

I believe that a combination of audits and assessments will be able to establish if these stated values etc., are effectively implemented/followed in the organization.

Some of the subjects that you mentioned, like the effective adoption of Corporate Values, are better assessed by experienced professionals than by Auditors, trained to audit with respect to audit criteria. My experience is that in significant number of cases the top management may not be aware of specifics of the so called "Coporate Values" while they know in general what to tell stakeholders about their "values" (normally well trained on this by the Corporate Communications personnel). The job of the assessor is to go beyond the expected preparation of the manager by his "experts".

If you see the companies which collapsed in the recent past, you would definitely see the "Values" flouted; mostly these "values" are for others. A seasoned professional would be able to assess if these values are for others or are being practiced in the company. This is, no doubt, a tricky question. Many times I have come across excellent written documents (while doing the desk-top assessment); most of the times my experience is that the managers interpret these values to suit their present demands. For example, a company may declare that they do not discriminate between sexes for appointments at high levels; if one gets into statistics one would find <1 % of the top executives are ladies. That shows that the written document is for the consumption of the stakeholder outside the company; the actual practice is entirely different. Of couse this can be brought out by an audit too. In an assessment it may come out that the CEO did not have any idea of (or care for) this "value" !!!

In short, the subjects you mentioned can be evaluated by a combination of structured audits and professional assessments.

with kind regards,

Ramakrishnan
 

Chennaiite

Never-say-die
Trusted Information Resource
#3
Hi Cove
companies use to have some values that they say they are committed to. aditionaly to the quality objectives such as , corporate responsibly, team spirit, HR well trained ...blabla
are that kind of value auditable ?

and in this case How ? which kind of checklist can be established to this kind of audit
:thanx: in advance
Selena
Standards apart, any Organization can always have a Policy of its own. In order to materialize the Policy, the Organization defines Objectives which are the measurable form of a Policy.
Keeping in mind that Audit is a form of measurement, any Policy is auditable, if it gets converted into Objectives. I hope that answers your first question.
Coming to your case, I take the example of Team Spirit as a Policy.
In order to measure the Team spirit, I would set an Objective of promoting some group activities in the Organization like Quality Circle, Kaizen team, etc. I would set target for number of Successful Quality Circles and would work on it. Now, it becomes quite auditable.
Does it help?
Thanks.
 
S

selena15

#4
Hi Folks
thanks for replies
sorry for the delay, an exhausting day....

Chennaiite, i'm not talking of objectives which comming from the policy organization. i'm talking about the values, which can support the objectives. It is kind of to say: the objectives of our organization are:
- Customer satisfaction
- development of the performance
- human performance
and these are supported by the values as
- responsability, gratitude, team spirit , initiative encuraged ....blabla
the last sentence is what i'm talking about. some values is pretty hard to be checked out or canno't be measurable but has, to my mind, significant effect in organization life.

for instance the latest value that i wrotte down above: the initiative encuraged , or the team spirit: even you are doing this quality circle.
it can be encuraged during this quality cricle but it doesn't ensure that this is the normal way to do work on that organization.

or it can be encuraged in high level but not so far in the bottom level of organization and as result, organization can lost a real competancy which are seeking of bether climat where to progress and so on.

or as the Dr said :yes:
[COLOR=#000000 said:
the companies which collapsed in the recent past, you would definitely see the "Values" flouted

[/COLOR]
Dr Ramakrishnan
thanks to make it little be clear, you got me right. we can shown to the world an pink picture but the reality is so far away from it. this is why i wanna know if it is possible to:
- to audit/asses this scope?
- does this audit/ assesment a requirement by standards or is made just if asked by stakeholders?
- You are talking about #experienced professionals# are you talking about someone from communication departement, or the responsible of public relationship?
-
[/FONT said:
Of couse this can be brought out by an audit too. In an assessment it may come out that the CEO did not have any idea of (or care for) this "value" !!!
. Why an assessment can succed where an audit may not ? why this difference ?or why we need to combine
the audit and an assessment.

an checklist would be welcomed :thanx:
 
#5
Hi Selena,

To answer your questions:

1. Yes. It is possible. I have been involved in such assessments for quite sometime (e.g., for a national award on Sustainability) and many times I could see the gap between what is written as "Code of conduct" or "Business Values" and the practice on ground.
2. Audit need not be based on a "Standard" (like ISO); as you know an audit is a structured process with Client, Auditee, Auditor, Audit Criteria etc., defined properly and the process steps as per agreed procedures - the agreement on the audit objective and methodology is normally made between the Client and the auditor. An assessment is slightly different; it is an evaluation of a thing, process, person, etc. (example: EIA, Assessment for an Award etc.). An assessor (for example, a Sustainability Assessor) has to be a person of knowledge in various dimensions which can be used to evaluate the subject in question. An assessor may also use auditing techniques to carry out the assessment. In simple terms, it is like a teacher evaluating a student - the teacher does not base his evaluation (assessment) of the student by his/her examination marks alone (which is similar to audit findings), but also by his interaction with him/her inside and outside the class.
3. Experienced Professional: The analogy given above is handy here; a teacher has to be an experienced person in the subject matter to evaluate the student. Similarly an experienced professional (in the subject, for example, in Sustainability) is required to evaluate (assess) an organization, individual, products, processes etc., for their values, eco-efficiency, compliance etc. There are quite a few Professional Organizations which help individuals to grow professionally in specific fields.
4. My experience is that any organization that has faced a few audits will be able to meet the audit criteria by "providing" "evidence". But in an assessment, the assessor, goes beyond the "audit" process and "audit criteria". His "Opinion" (assessment) matters in the final outcome of the assessment. (for example, when we carried out an assessment for an award, even though the desk top evaluation indicated to a stong Sustainability bias in the organization, the interview with the CEO indicated that his understanding of the subject was hollow - we didn't want him to know the nitty-gritties, but he should be aware of borad understanding of the subject. We evaluated this organization "poor" under Leadership)

Hope the above gives you some idea of what I meant by a combination of audits and assessments.

With kind regards,

Ramakrishnan
 
#6
Hi Selena,

To answer your questions:

1. Yes. It is possible. I have been involved in such assessments for quite sometime (e.g., for a national award on Sustainability) and many times I could see the gap between what is written as "Code of conduct" or "Business Values" and the practice on ground.
2. Audit need not be based on a "Standard" (like ISO); as you know an audit is a structured process with Client, Auditee, Auditor, Audit Criteria etc., defined properly and the process steps as per agreed procedures - the agreement on the audit objective and methodology is normally made between the Client and the auditor. An assessment is slightly different; it is an evaluation of a thing, process, person, etc. (example: EIA, Assessment for an Award etc.). An assessor (for example, a Sustainability Assessor) has to be a person of knowledge in various dimensions which can be used to evaluate the subject in question. An assessor may also use auditing techniques to carry out the assessment. In simple terms, it is like a teacher evaluating a student - the teacher does not base his evaluation (assessment) of the student by his/her examination marks alone (which is similar to audit findings), but also by his interaction with him/her inside and outside the class.
3. Experienced Professional: The analogy given above is handy here; a teacher has to be an experienced person in the subject matter to evaluate the student. Similarly an experienced professional (in the subject, for example, in Sustainability) is required to evaluate (assess) an organization, individual, products, processes etc., for their values, eco-efficiency, compliance etc. There are quite a few Professional Organizations which help individuals to grow professionally in specific fields.
4. My experience is that any organization that has faced a few audits will be able to meet the audit criteria by "providing" "evidence". But in an assessment, the assessor, goes beyond the "audit" process and "audit criteria". His "Opinion" (assessment) matters in the final outcome of the assessment. (for example, when we carried out an assessment for an award, even though the desk top evaluation indicated to a stong Sustainability bias in the organization, the interview with the CEO indicated that his understanding of the subject was hollow - we didn't want him to know the nitty-gritties, but he should be aware of borad understanding of the subject. We evaluated this organization "poor" under Leadership)

Hope the above gives you some idea of what I meant by a combination of audits and assessments.

With kind regards,

Ramakrishnan
An interesting description, however, I believe that (in the western world, perhaps) the two terms - audit and assessment - are used interchangeably and to mean the same thing.......
 
S

selena15

#7
Hi Dr Ramakrishnan
Thanks for explanation.

to make a resume, and as Andyn said it is pretty the same thing with the difference that the assessor has to have an advance knowledge and a complete overview about the scope targeted, while the audit will be based on the procedure and the criteria decided togheter with the top management or any one who ask to audit one area.
So the assessor, regarding his experience on the targeted scope will bring additional value relating to his experience and how deep he digged into the organization.

This, reach out another remark to me, i've saw by the past, one interesting evaluation. Let me tell you the result:
Yearly, the back office send a complete set of questions, asking in general about the way we use to work, with team or alone, if we have a manager position; or just employee, if initiative is encuraged .... sometimes , you can find out the same question asked in differents ways and areas into the evaluation. normally this evaluation is send by the back office but through an independant organism which will collect these datas and send a report to back office.
According to the result, the sites which get a bad/poor marks will get an assessment as you said and this assessment is decided by the back office or the client.

But the fact is, many times, when the evaluation questionary arrived to the site, it is fullfiled not separately, each one by his own, but believe me, one meeting is scheduled and with the excuse to explain all term and mean of these evaluation, the evaluation is fulfilled together with all the staff and tom management in one meeting and later send to the back office in sealed independent letter.
This method, to send the first evaluation to the sites by questionnaire, is usefull when a multinational has lot of site and in different area, so it make it easy in fact, but the result can be biased as you can see
So what do you think about this ?

:thanx: in advance

PS: some interesting books' titles about this subject would be welcome :D
Selena
 

Randy

Super Moderator
#8
Lot's of nice things have been posted, but in the words of Emperor Joseph II in the movie Amadeus...."Too many notes" in this case too many words....

The checklist and how to audit is very simple....Audit them to what they say they are going to do, use their committments, promises, goals or whatever as the checklist and have them provide eveidence of doing more than talking nice stuff.
 

Caster

An Early Cover
Trusted Information Resource
#9
Lot's of nice things have been posted, but in the words of Emperor Joseph II in the movie Amadeus...."Too many notes" in this case too many words....The checklist and how to audit is very simple....Audit them to what they say they are going to do, use their committments, promises, goals or whatever as the checklist and have them provide eveidence of doing more than talking nice stuff.
Or you could just check out the employee washroom - JOKE!

http://elsmar.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=14681&highlight=employee+washroom

I also see this as easy, you can pretty much tell if the words are real or just on paper after a few minutes or hours at the site.
 
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