Workplace Safety Audit Checklist: How to Audit Your Safety System

An inspection tells you whether a work area is safe today. An audit tells you whether your safety system will keep it safe tomorrow. This guide covers what a workplace safety audit is, what to include in your audit checklist, how to run an audit step by step, how to handle audits across multiple sites, and how to make sure findings lead to real change.

Why safety audits matter

Under the model Work Health and Safety laws, a business must manage risks so far as is reasonably practicable and keep control measures effective. Officers, such as directors and senior managers, must exercise due diligence to make sure the business has appropriate resources and processes and is using them. An audit is one of the clearest ways to check that this is actually happening.

Audits also pick up the slow drift that inspections miss: procedures nobody follows, training that has lapsed, inspections that are done but never acted on, or actions that stay open for months.

Types of safety audit

• Internal audits: run by your own trained staff, often on a yearly cycle or by topic through the year.
• External audits: run by an independent auditor, client or certification body.
• Compliance audits: focused on a specific law, regulation or client requirement.
• Management system audits: against a standard such as ISO 45001, the international standard for occupational health and safety management systems, which is also adopted in Australia as AS/NZS ISO 45001.

Workplace safety audit checklist

Tailor the checklist to your business and risks. Most audits cover these areas:

Leadership and policy

• A current WHS policy, signed and communicated
• Clear safety roles and responsibilities, including for officers
• Safety objectives, with resources to meet them

Consultation

• Arrangements for consulting workers, such as HSRs or a WHS committee
• Evidence that consultation happens and feedback is acted on

Hazard identification and risk management

• A risk register or risk assessments for key hazards and tasks
• Control measures chosen using the hierarchy of controls
• Controls reviewed when they fail, when things change or when new hazards are found

Procedures and training

• Safe work procedures for high-risk tasks, current and workable
• Induction, training and licence records up to date
• Contractor management, including inductions and checks

Inspections and maintenance

• Scheduled workplace inspections completed
• Plant and equipment pre-start checks and maintenance records
• Testing and tagging, fire equipment and first aid checks current

Incidents and corrective actions

• Incidents and near misses reported and investigated
• Corrective actions assigned, completed on time and verified
• Notifiable incidents reported to the regulator where required

Emergency preparedness

• Emergency plans current, and drills held and reviewed
• Exits, alarms, extinguishers and first aid in order

How to conduct a safety audit

1. Set the scope. Decide which sites, activities and requirements the audit covers, and what you are auditing against.
2. Prepare. Build or update the audit checklist, and review previous audits, incidents and open actions.
3. Gather evidence. Review records, observe work, and talk to workers, supervisors and HSRs. Check that what is written down matches what happens.
4. Record findings. For each item, record whether it meets the requirement, with evidence such as photos, document references and notes.
5. Report. Summarise strengths, findings and their risk level, and present them to management.
6. Act and verify. Turn each finding into an action with an owner and due date, and verify it is closed before the next audit.

Auditing across multiple sites

Multi-site businesses face an extra challenge: every site does things slightly differently, and results end up spread across spreadsheets and inboxes. To make multi-site audits work:

• Use one checklist for all sites, with site-specific sections only where needed, so results can be compared.
• Keep results in one place, so managers can see every site’s findings and open actions without chasing files.
• Compare sites to spot common problems that need a business-wide fix rather than a local one.
• Share what works from your best-performing sites.

From findings to actions

The most common audit finding is that actions from the last audit were never closed. To break that cycle:

• Give each finding a named owner and a due date based on risk.
• Require evidence, such as a photo, document or record, before an action is closed.
• Escalate overdue actions to management.
• Check previous findings at the start of every audit.

With DIGI CLIP, auditors complete audit checklists on a phone or tablet, even without coverage, and add photos, comments and signatures. Each form is location- and time-stamped. Findings flow into the Action Log, where they are assigned, tracked and closed out with evidence, and overdue actions are escalated by email. Results from every site sit in one place.

Illustrative scenario: training records that didn’t match

During an internal audit at a regional depot, the auditor finds three forklift operators whose licence records aren’t on file. She records the finding in DIGI CLIP and raises an action for the depot manager. The manager confirms the licences, uploads copies and closes out the action. Comparing results across depots, the auditor sees the same gap at two other sites and raises a business-wide action to fix the induction process.

This scenario is illustrative. It shows how a business could use DIGI CLIP and is not an account of a specific customer.

For day-to-day checks, see our guide to workplace safety inspections. For risk assessments, see understanding workplace risk assessments.

See our guide to choosing an inspection app for a feature-by-feature checklist. Incidents, hazards and investigations can be managed alongside inspections in Safety Tracker.

To run this audit on a phone, see our safety audit app guide.