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.
Wow, Discordian, I've rarely seen you stray so far from my way of thinking! "Screw those audits, I've had my vacation scheduled since January 1!" = My thinking and the thinking of everyone else with enough experience to get 3 or 4 weeks scheduled vacation every year. Vacations are not some priveledge to be granted at the behest of some high muckity-muck. They are well deserved recharge times for your best people. I would never screw my best people out of a long awaited vacation! I have a TS audit that was scheduled for the week of June 18-22, between the registrar and I, two weeks after I scheduled June 22 off. The audit
will take place on any two days that week
except June 22. This vacation day is pointless if rescheduled because that day is the only day that some very important people in my life (way more important than my job!) will be gathered together.
I don't understand why you feel the need to have "everyone on deck" for an external audit, even a registration audit. Companies run without 100% of the people every day, every week. People get sick or take vacation. Are you telling me that you can't pass a registration audit without everyone present? I can understand that you don't want the entire management team to cut and run the week of the audit but do you want to make enemies in management if you've got a couple that booked flights, hotels, reservations and plans for a week with their family last October?
We are a small company, theres nothing the Engineering manager knows that cannot be taught to another individual. Heck, the audit is 3 months away. Is everyone saying to reschedule an audit that far out because of one person being on vacation? Our processes aren't that complicated that any competent person couldn't learn.
We're a small company, too. Our auditor likes to talk to the Engineering Manager every time he audits. He doesn't always get to do so. I firmly believe that asking some hard questions a little farther down the line gives him, and us, the confidence that our enterprise is not too dependent on any single person.
Me thinks you complain too much. This audit was scheduled at a time that you knew folks would be on vacation. Why was it scheduled for a time when folks were on vacation????
I'm not privy to everyone's schedule 12 or even 6 months out. We schedule, we adapt. This is not that big a deal!
.. Simply because there was no overwhelming evidence of everyone suggesting to reschedule the audit. Our Internal Audit is next month. Perhaps it would be a good time to 'test' the trainee in that situation with the manager closely monitoring. Or have the trainee closely monitor the manager.
Don't reschedule. Get a handle on the gaps between manager and trainee knowledge during Internal Audit so you can fill them before the External Audit. Once again, I believe that a robust QMS system should be able to handle this kind of thing without resorting to vacation mangling or excessive wrangling over audit dates.