In recent years the importance of good corporate governance has received significant public and regulatory attention.
A critical part of an entity’s corporate governance is its internal audit function which acts as a valuable tool for reviewing, improving and ensuring a company has effective internal controls.
“Nevertheless, more often than not, internal audits are seen to be bureaucratic, document-focussed, and irrelevant to how the business actually gets things done, explains Max Goodwin, principal environmental consultant.
“It is extremely important to ensure that internal audits have the support of senior management, and indeed adopt a performance-centred approach to improving the business. Based on the combined experiences of our personnel across the Xodus Group, we have established a world-class auditing capability which can help clients yield greater value from the time and effort they invest in auditing.” Max adds.
With a unique range of capabilities, Xodus can select and field an audit team comprising experts from particular disciplines – for example safety, environmental, and process – which creates a thorough and highly engaging approach to the audit.
Carried out effectively, audits can identify sources of risk to a business and communicate these to management in a way that helps them understand the real cause and in turn target improvements, in order to avoid incidents and inefficiency.
Xodus Group is currently working with a number of clients including Chevron, Talisman and Shell in an auditing capacity, where the techniques used by management, and the behaviours and performance outcomes they produce, are the focus of a rigorous and effective approach.
The credentials of the Xodus ‘Auditing for Performance’ service was also recently boosted after receiving the prestigious Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA) accreditation mark in April 2008, following a visit by a representative from the IEMA to observe the implementation of our first environmental auditor training course.
“IEMA approval is very important to us and our clients, but the course goes beyond providing basic auditing skills, it equips auditors to really challenge and improve the performance of the organisations they are working with by using advanced interviewing techniques and deep root cause analysis.” Max adds.
Xodus is running both public and in-house courses for clients.
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