A personnel audit is a check of personnel performance that is performed by specially designated employees or an external organization. Unlike the classical audit used in accounting, personnel audit is not mandatory and is not regulated by special laws and legal acts of the Russian Federation. It is carried out at the initiative of the head of the enterprise to solve certain problems. The main purpose of such a check is, most often, to identify the state of the personnel of the company. It is also used to find ways to increase labor productivity and reduce production costs.
How to classify
Checks relate to one or another type of personnel audit by such parameters as:
- The period of the data used: short-term, long-term and short-term.
- Method of obtaining information: oral or documentary
- The nature of the information checked: legal, qualification or mixed;
- The persons conducting the audit: internal and external.
The personnel audit is carried out in two directions: the identification of legal violations and the identification of labor discipline violations - the search for unreasonable cost overruns, the identification of simple reasons, marriage, etc. Therefore, the personnel audit in the area of activity is mainly divided into legal, qualification and mixed.
Legal personnel audit
During the legal personnel audit, they check the documentation of the personnel department, the personnel schedule of the workshops, check the invoices and receipts with the available materials and tools. Check the correctness of filling out labor contracts, work books, decrees of managers. Check for compliance by employees with job descriptions. They conduct surveys and conduct surveys on the fact of detecting violations of the labor legislation of the Russian Federation, as well as the rules and standards adopted in a particular field of activity that employees must comply with. For example, the requirements of sanitary standards in the food industry, GOSTs, quality standards and regulatory compliance.
The main task of a legal personnel audit is to identify violations before a special commission identifies them during the audit. This will help to avoid problems with the law and improve the quality of products and services.
Qualification HR Audit
Qualification personnel audit of the organization is carried out in order to identify shortcomings in the work of the staff and determine how to eliminate them. It also makes it possible to identify the presence of insufficient qualifications of a worker or vice versa, to identify the most valuable personnel that need to be promoted or to increase wages so that they work even better and do more.
Qualification personnel audit is most relevant in those areas of activity where the success of the enterprise depends entirely on the professional qualities of the employee. For example, in trade. If the seller mistreats buyers, out of ignorance or inability, then this directly affects the financial result of the enterprise - revenue is reduced, volumes of expired products are growing. At the same time, only a check can determine whether the reason for the decrease in revenue is really the low qualification of the employee, and not any other factor. In this example, a personnel audit would help to identify an unscrupulous employee and replace him in time, until the trading company was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Comprehensive HR Audit
A comprehensive personnel audit involves the use of both legal and qualification audits, as well as all available methods for evaluating and analyzing information. Such a check makes it possible to assess the state of personnel and identify the personnel potential of the company, identify existing legal violations at the enterprise and remove them before it leads to undesirable financial and personnel losses.
In addition to the advantages listed above, this method of conducting a personnel audit has two drawbacks - it will cost more and take longer, as a larger number of participants will be involved in order to verify a large amount of data. Therefore, it makes sense to conduct it only in emergency cases: in the event of a threat of bankruptcy or during a financial crisis, when the market narrows and competition intensifies.
Who can check
The audit of the personnel system can be carried out both by company employees and third-party organizations. In this case, the problem arises with determining the level of competence of the inspector, since the concept of personnel audit is not fixed in legal practice, and those instructions, standards and rules that exist are intended for audit in accounting activities. But after all, how complete and reliable the information will be received and how it will be analyzed and evaluated depends on what steps the head of the enterprise will take to improve the situation with staff.
However, a solution was found. So, as the basic instructions and rules for organizing a personnel audit at an enterprise, the basics of financial audit can be taken, and in particular, such requirements for the information received and provided, such as:
- objectivity;
- reliability;
- timeliness;
- honesty;
- fullness.
Accordingly, the auditor must observe not only the rules of professional ethics, be honest and objective, but also adhere to certain rules when collecting and processing information, as well as preparing an audit report. At the same time, he does not need to have any special certificate with him for engaging in such an activity as a personnel audit. But this does not mean that any employee can carry it out. In order to solve the tasks of personnel audit, the inspector must have a certain level of knowledge and qualifications.
An employee audit can be carried out either by an employee of a specialized company, or someone from the enterprise personnel with a sufficient level of education and competence. Most often, these are department heads, accountants, etc. highly qualified specialists. And here the dilemma arises before the head of the enterprise: Which is better, hire a specialized organization or conduct an audit on your own? The answer to this question depends on factors such as:
- The cost of the work of highly qualified personnel, involved in the personnel audit and the cost of the services of an audit company;
- The amount of information requiring processing and the acceptable time for processing it.
It is usually believed that a personnel audit performed by employees of an enterprise is cheaper, which is not always true. Attracting external specialists is often much more profitable if it is necessary to conduct an audit at a large enterprise, where the amount of information is very large. Firms providing audit services have more experience, their employees are more qualified, at least in the field of personnel audit, then the audit will be cheaper and better, and will take less time.
In-house personnel audit, how to conduct
If the head of the enterprise still decided to conduct an audit with the help of his employees, he needs to know some features. Typically, the goal of a personnel audit in this case is to study the work not of the enterprise as a whole, but of a separate department, and it is necessary to ensure the maximum level of confidentiality of information.
To begin with, the leader will have to create a working group, usually it consists of 4-5 people, and determine the person responsible for conducting the audit and preparing the audit report. The whole process of preparation and conduct can not be broken down the following stages of personnel audit:
- Development of an action plan.
- Determining the sample size: the number of employees interviewed, the volume and type of documents being checked. The larger the sample, the more accurate the result will be, but the longer the verification procedure will take.
- Development of questionnaire forms, preparation of questions.
- Checking the documentation of the personnel department, as well as documents on the site being checked.
- Interviewing and questioning of employees
- Analysis of the information collected, including using computer technology and special programs.
- Drawing up, on the basis of the information obtained during the audit, an audit report in which the person responsible for the implementation of the personnel audit at the enterprise expresses his opinion on the condition of the personnel, their qualifications and satisfaction with working conditions.
An audit report is made in writing, evidence is attached to it in the form of a report on the work done. All report pages should be numbered and filed in a folder. In general, there are no strict rules for drawing up a conclusion, as well as conducting, since the purpose of a personnel audit is to obtain information for internal users, therefore, the data obtained as a result of such verification is not published anywhere, and most often they are strictly confidential and their disclosure is unacceptable. Moreover, the confidentiality of information should be ensured, both at the planning stage, and the results of the verification. It is advisable that the employees of the enterprise do not know about the upcoming audit. This will help to avoid collusion between them, which means it will make it possible to increase the objectivity and reliability of the information received.
Methods of collecting and processing information
The methods of personnel audit are no different from those used in the audit, only information of a different nature and purpose is obtained. Mostly they use pre-prepared questionnaire forms and question lists. The information obtained during the audit on the employees of the enterprise is compared with the basic requirements prescribed in specialized manuals, job descriptions and work quality standards.
The information obtained during the audit in the form of questionnaires and records of answers to questions and other documents that were received during the audit is collected, sorted and compared according to the time and place when the personnel audit was conducted. The report compiled from the results of the audit should contain, if not all documents, then the most important of them.
What tasks makes it possible to solve a personnel audit
An audit of the personnel system helps to better assess the company's potential and staff qualifications. This makes it possible to identify the most valuable employees from the work collective and provide them with work and wages that are more consistent with their level.
As experience shows, it is more profitable for a leader to raise those who already work in an enterprise along the career ladder than to hire a new one. On the one hand, this will increase the return on other employees, since they will see career prospects, on the other, a new employee may not take root in the team, and this will increase staff turnover, which could negatively affect the results of the enterprise. Staff turnover may also be a consequence of improper personnel policies. For example, if the complexity of the work or the level of responsibility and the level of payment do not match. This can only be revealed by an audit of personnel work.
Such a check helps not only to identify the most valuable employees or get rid of the least valuable, but also to solve problems that are directly related to the fact that the organization of labor has been carried out incorrectly. For example, during an inspection, in one of the workshops, it was revealed that due to improper placement of materials, workers spent up to two hours a day just to deliver them to processing sites, since they were stored in a distant warehouse. As a result, time and effort were wasted. Workers got tired faster and lost concentration. This affected the quality and volume of products. Without conducting a personnel audit, this systemic production error would not have been fixed, which means that resources would be wasted.
Auditors Responsibility
The auditor is only liable for his opinion expressed in the audit report. In the end, the decision on personnel changes is made by the head of the enterprise, and the task of the auditor is only to convey to him the state of the personnel of the enterprise, what is the level of their qualifications, whether there are violations of the law, labor discipline, safety precautions, whether the company really highly qualified specialists. Indicate the factors that negatively or positively affect the work of the staff and the rational use of those working hours.
As a result, the auditor draws up an audit report, which indicates:
- what activities were carried out;
- how much work was done;
- what problems and risks he encountered in the course of his work;
- what needs to be done to rectify the situation if the state of personnel or personnel policy is negative;
- possible consequences if violations are not corrected.
The audit itself does not solve the problem of improperly selected personnel or incorrect actions of employees, violation of safety rules by them or non-compliance with instructions and technical regulations. The purpose of a personnel audit is to identify the weaknesses and strengths of the personnel system available at the enterprise and give recommendations on how to eliminate shortcomings and improve this system. The auditor is not responsible for the state of the personnel policy and the decisions that the head will make based on the results of the audit.
Where and how to hire auditors to verify staff
These types of services are mainly provided by consulting companies and recruitment agencies that specialize in consulting and staffing for other enterprises. Such organizations exist in almost every major city. They most often place announcements of their services in local advertising newspapers and magazines or on special advertising walls on the Internet. Some have an official company website.
When hiring between an enterprise and a company that provides personnel audit services, an agreement is drawn up in which the rights and obligations of the parties must be prescribed and the service is paid. Typically, the contracting parties meet several times before drafting the contract, discussing the nuances and possible risks. What events will be held. An approximate work plan is discussed (a consulting company may even submit a prospectus for a personnel audit plan).
The main advantage of engaging a third-party specialized organization for organizing a personnel audit is the independence of the audit. If an employee of an enterprise, one way or another, depends on both the manager and the work team, then the external auditor has almost complete independence. His opinion is based only on observable facts.
A personnel audit is one of the easiest and most affordable ways to check the organization’s personnel system and determine the company's personnel potential. This method of verification is an integral part of the management accounting of the company and should be carried out regularly, regardless of the financial result of its activities.