Personnel audit is Definition, types, methods, tasks and goals

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Personnel audit is a check of the effectiveness of the work of the staff, performed by specially designated employees or by a third party. Unlike the classic 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 an audit, most often, is to identify the state of the company's personnel. It is also used to find ways to increase productivity and reduce production costs.

How to classify

Inspections are related to one or another type of personnel audit according to such parameters as:

• Data period used: short-term, long-term and short-term.
• Method of obtaining information: oral or documentary
• Nature of the information being checked: legal, qualifying or mixed;
• To reviewers: internal and external.

Personnel audit is carried out in two directions: identification of legal violations andidentification of violations of labor discipline - search for unreasonable cost overruns, identification of reasons for simple, marriage, etc. Therefore, personnel audit in the direction 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 time sheet of the workshops, check invoices and receipts with the available materials and tools. Check the correctness of filling out employment contracts, work books, executive orders. Checking whether employees are following job descriptions. They conduct surveys and conduct surveys to identify 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 compliance with regulations.

The main task of a legal personnel audit is to identify violations before they are detected by a special commission during the audit. This will help avoid problems with the law and improve the quality of products and services.

Qualification personnel audit

Qualifying personnel audit of the organization is carried out in order to identify shortcomings in the work of personnel and determine ways to eliminate them. It also makes it possible to identify the presence of insufficient qualifications of a worker oron the contrary, to identify the most valuable personnel who need to be promoted or paid more so that they perform 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 treats buyers incorrectly, out of ignorance or inability, then this directly affects the financial result of the enterprise - revenue decreases, volumes of expired products increase. At the same time, only a check can reveal whether the reason for the decrease in revenue is the low qualification of the employee, and not some other factor. In this example, a personnel audit would help to identify an unscrupulous employee and replace him in time, before the trading company was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Comprehensive personnel audit

Comprehensive personnel audit involves the use of both legal and qualification audits, as well as all available methods for assessing 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 in the enterprise and remove them before it leads to undesirable financial and personnel losses.

This method of conducting a personnel audit has, in addition to the listed advantages, two disadvantages - it will cost more and take more time, as more participants will be involved to check a large amount of data. That's whyit makes sense to carry out only in emergency cases: in case of bankruptcy or during a financial crisis, when the market narrows and competition intensifies.

Who can inspect

Audit of the personnel system can be carried out by both employees of the company and third-party organizations. At the same time, 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 auditing in accounting activities. But 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 personnel.

However, a way out was found. So, as 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 information received and provided as:

• objectivity;
• credibility;
• timeliness;
• honesty;
• fullness.

Accordingly, the auditor must comply not only with 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 to engage in such an activity as a personnel audit. But that doesn't meanthat it can be carried out by any employee. In order to solve the tasks of a personnel audit, the inspector must have a certain level of knowledge and qualifications.

Perform an audit of personnel can either be an employee of a specialized company, or someone from the personnel of the enterprise with a sufficient level of education and competence. Most often, these are department heads, accountants, and other highly qualified specialists. And here a dilemma arises before the head of the enterprise: What is better, to hire a specialized organization or to conduct an audit on their own? The answer to this question depends on factors such as:

• The cost of highly qualified personnel involved in the personnel audit and the cost of services of an audit company;
• Amount of information requiring processing and allowable terms for its processing.

It is generally believed that a personnel audit performed by employees of an enterprise is cheaper, which is not always true. The involvement of external specialists is often much more profitable if it is necessary to conduct an audit in a large enterprise, where the volume 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 cost less and better, and take less time.

Personnel audit on your own, how to conduct

If the head of the enterprise nevertheless decided to conduct an audit with the help of his employees,he needs to know some features. Usually, the goal of a personnel audit in this case is to study the work not of the enterprise as a whole, but of some separate department, while it is necessary to ensure the maximum level of confidentiality of information.

To begin with, the manager will have to create a working group, usually it includes 4-5 people, and determine the person responsible for conducting the audit and drawing up the audit report. The whole process of preparation and conduct can be divided into the following stages of a personnel audit:

1. Developing an action plan.
2. Determination of the sample size: the number of interviewed employees, the volume and type of documents checked. The larger the sample, the more accurate the result, but the longer the verification procedure will take.
3. Development of questionnaire forms, preparation of questions.
4. Checking the documentation of the personnel department, as well as documents in the area being checked.
5. Survey and questioning of employees of the enterprise.
6. Analysis of the collected information, including using computer technology and special programs.
7. Drafting, based on 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 state of personnel, their qualifications and satisfaction with working conditions.

The audit report is drawn up in writing, evidence is attached to it in the form of a report on the work done. All pages of the report must be numbered and filed in a folder. In general, anyor there are no strict rules for drawing up a conclusion, as well as conducting it, since the purpose of a personnel audit is to obtain information for internal users, therefore, the data obtained as a result of such an audit are not published anywhere, and most often they are strictly confidential and their disclosure is unacceptable. Moreover, the confidentiality of information must be ensured, both at the planning stage and the results of the verification. It is desirable that the employees of the enterprise do not know about the upcoming inspection. 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.

Information collection and processing methods

HR audit methods are no different from those used in accounting audits, only information of a different nature and purpose is obtained. They mainly use pre-prepared forms of questionnaires and lists of questions. The information obtained during the audit about 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 on the basis of the results of the audit should contain, if not all documents, then the most important of them.

What tasks can be solvedpersonnel audit

Audit of the personnel system helps to better assess the potential of the company and the qualifications of the staff. This makes it possible to identify the most valuable employees in the workforce and provide them with jobs and wages that are more in line with their level.

As experience shows, it is more profitable for a manager to raise those who already work at the enterprise up the career ladder than to hire a new one. On the one hand, this will increase the return on other employees, as they will see career prospects, on the other hand, a new employee may not take root in the team, and this increases staff turnover, which can negatively affect the performance of the enterprise. Staff turnover can also be the result of an incorrect personnel policy. For example, if the complexity of the work or the level of responsibility and the level of payment do not match. This can only reveal an audit of personnel work.

Such a check helps not only to identify the most valuable employees or get rid of the least valuable ones, but also to solve problems that are directly related to the fact that the organization of labor is incorrectly carried out at the enterprise. 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 delivering them to processing sites, since they were stored in a distant warehouse. As a result, time and effort were wasted. Workers tired faster and lost concentration. This affected the quality and volume of products. Without a personnel audit, this system errorproduction would not be fixed, which means resources would be wasted.

Responsibility of auditors

The auditor is only responsible for his opinion as expressed in the auditor's 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 about the state of the personnel of the enterprise, what level of their qualifications, whether there are violations of the law, labor discipline, safety measures, whether there are really highly qualified specialists. Indicate the factors that negatively or positively affect the work of staff and the rational use of working time.

As a result, the auditor draws up an audit report in which he indicates:

• what events were held;
• how much work was done;
• what problems and risks did he encounter in the course of his work;
• what needs to be done to correct the situation if the state of personnel or personnel policy is negative;
• possible consequences if violations are not corrected.

In itself, the inspection does not solve the problem of improperly selected personnel or incorrect actions of employees of the enterprise, their violation of safety rules or non-compliance with instructions and technical regulations. The purpose of a personnel audit is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the existing personnel system at the enterprise and give recommendations on how to eliminate shortcomings and improve this system. The auditor does notresponsibility for the state of personnel policy and decisions that the manager will make based on the results of the audit.

Where and how to hire auditors to check personnel

This kind of service is mainly provided by consulting companies and recruitment agencies that specialize in consulting and recruiting for other enterprises. There are such organizations in almost every major city. They most often advertise their services in local advertising newspapers and magazines or on special advertising walls on the Internet. Some have an official website of the company.

When hiring, an agreement is drawn up between an enterprise and a company providing personnel audit services, which should specify the rights and obligations of the parties and pay for the service. Usually, the contracting parties meet several times before drawing up a contract, discussing the nuances and possible risks. What activities will be carried out. A rough plan of work is negotiated (the consulting company may even submit a prospectus for the HR audit plan).

The main advantage of engaging a third-party specialized organization to organize 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 workforce, then the external auditor has almost complete independence. His opinion is based only on observed facts.

HR audit is one of the easiest and most affordable ways to check the personnel system of an organization anddetermine the existing human resources potential of the enterprise. This method of verification is an integral part of the company's management accounting and should be carried out regularly, regardless of the financial result of its activities.