An employee suggestion was received stating that if we did not document minor findings we could save the company +240 man hours to make those corrections.
What's your opinion? Should minor findings be written up for folks not following work instructions?
I'll admit that we write up all findings, but we do word them in such a way to make them value-added to the organization and this includes considering the level of risk to the organization (i.e., what could
potentially occur by deviating from the documented process).
How are your auditors writing up the findings? "People are not following the documented process?" Try this..."Documented process and actual practice do not match." This then takes the focus off of the people and has everyone asking why there has occurred. Yes, it could be people or, maybe the process has changed.
Essentially, rather than write up every single occurence, our auditors look to group the occurrences (if possible). If there is an apparently lack of adherence to the documented process within a department, the finding is written up as a Major issue, citing the individual examples as the evidence for justifying the level of the issue. This then requires root cause analysis by the recipient (go ahead and slap it on the Dept Manager's desk...get the big guy/gal involved!). Maybe people aren't following the document because it's wrong...maybe people have found a better way to do something but the document does not yet reflect this improved process with improved results. Let the recipient figure out WHY all of the little issues have added up to one biggie.
If you can not group the occurrences together, word the findings in such a way to highlight the level of risk to the organization. Imply environmental or safety repercussions...and if you aren't comfortable with writing the possible outcomes, ensuring that they are verbally explained in the closing meeting.
Another option to consider is that if you have so many occurrences of little deviations happening, it might be time for some data analysis which may spark "Recommendations for Improvement" to be discussed during your next Management Review. 240+ hours implies a few things...perhaps you have lots of deviations from the process or perhaps you have a lot of bad documents or perhaps your people aren't really fixing the issues (240 hours?!?! What the heck are they doing when they get this nonconformances?!?!)...time to delve a little deeper into the situation, my friend, and determine what is truly going on with your processes and documentation.