Do you audit the legal compliance of your international facilities? We do this often on behalf of our clients and, as you can imagine, come across all sorts of challenges along the way.
Here is an overview of some of the main issues that we come across:
Corporate Standards – One size does not fit all
In particular, we have found that certain issues come up often when auditing against the implementation of corporate policies based on UK or US standards or best-practice. This is largely because the ideas of safety and the necessary precautions that are well-established parts of working culture in the UK and US are often not fully realised in other countries/cultures. This can mean it can be a challenge to achieve acceptance and ownership of the standards that are being applied. It also means that local regulatory requirements can also sometimes be overlooked – where these might be stricter, or simply different to those imposed elsewhere.
Management styles and organisational hierarchy
In Germanic and Scandinavian countries responsibilities for EHS tend to be with unit managers as part of their responsibility for an area/unit. Sometimes there is no overarching role to support them and verify that the organisation as a whole complies. In these countries plant managers can work independently of one another. This can be problematic as an auditor as individual unit managers have all the information relating to H&S and whilst one unit may perform very well, another unit may perform poorly. In any case the auditor is required to visit all the unit managers separately which means a greater audit effort.
This was a particular issue for us during an audit of a site in Sweden. We conducted a wide scale compliance audit of the same site in both 2009 and 2012 – and the compliance situation in 2012 was still exactly the same as in 2009, as no one had control over the individual unit managers. This style of management is apparently common in Sweden where roles are delegated and complete trust is given to the people that the role is delegated to.
Risk assessment vs prescriptive regulation culture
In Europe there is a culture of risk assessment. In fact, there are legal obligations on companies to carry out risk assessments for all the potential risks at a specific site. The results of the risk assessments are then used to inform what should be done. In the US, regulations tend to be much more specific and they don’t have a culture of risk assessment. American auditors that we have worked with have been heard to comment that it can be very hard to perform audits in Europe because the legislation is not prescriptive and you need to look more at the risk assessment process, so it becomes more like a management system audit.
Country history, size, population
It perhaps goes without saying, but the geographic, demographic and economic aspects of a country can also have an impact on legal compliance auditing and it is crucial to have an awareness of these factors. For example, in larger countries with bigger populations, more accidents are likely to be reported, which means that those countries can be more adverse to certain risks. Likewise, we have noticed that the more people in a country have access to safety information/knowledge the greater their perception of risk tends to be so they tend to want to be more involved in audits. Wealthier countries also tend to have better funded inspection and enforcement bodies – which can have a direct impact on safety culture. In addition, geographical and meteorological factors might influence the topics of most concern in a particular country. For example, countries with a risk of earthquakes might have more emergency management requirements. Countries in hot climates may be focused on worker welfare.
Former soviet countries – asbestos in buildings.
One of the findings we have frequently come across is the presence of asbestos in buildings in the former Soviet countries. In our experience, the presence of asbestos is simply not seen as a big problem; many people have never even heard of asbestos surveys etc. We were once carrying out an audit in Armenia against a company standard saying that all buildings over a certain age had to have an asbestos survey carried out. They had never heard of such a requirement and quickly showed me that the company that provided their roof tiles also supplied hospitals, so they must be asbestos free, whereas in former soviet countries the use of asbestos-containing materials in buildings is still current. When we put a recommendation in an audit report to carry out an asbestos survey, the company concerned couldn’t find any local supplier who had heard of doing such a thing. However, it should be noted that some countries still produce asbestos-containing materials, so the matter is simply not legislated. The finding therefore only arose when applying European standards.
Health and safety in offices
We have seen a strong movement in recent years in companies in the UK and US (particularly in the baking and insurance sector) seeking to make sure that they pay particular attention to how health and safety is managed in their office-based operations. However, in many countries this is quite simply not something that is ever paid attention to. So when the corporate global compliance audit comes knocking the managers of the offices in question tend to scramble to put something in place before the audit. We have found this to be particularly the case in Asian countries as they are (of course) more focused on the compliance in manufacturing facilities. Having a health and safety audit for office can sometimes be difficult to get their heads around. Sometimes they don’t see the point. Yet in terms of audit non-compliance findings, we find the same percentage non-compliance scores when auditing offices when compared to industrial sites.
Communication problems
Language will always present a problem and can lead to misinterpretation. We once went to conduct a health & safety audit of a bank in Switzerland – but there was some confusion from local staff when we arrived as they were expecting an audit on general security measures – the word “sécurité” in French means both safety AND security. Of course, in the mind-set of a bank, security is at the forefront of their minds.
Final remarks
In order to be effective legal compliance auditors it is important to understand local law and even the principles behind those local regulations. It cannot be enough to simply impose a set of corporate standards in every situation. An awareness of cultural differences, current hot enforcement topics and patterns are also important tools to have.
