Make sure your company's annual SG-SST audit gets done

The employer must carry out an annual compliance audit of the Occupational Safety and Health Management System (SG-SST), planned with the participation of the Joint OSH Committee (COPASST) or OSH Monitor (Vigía). If the audit is done by in-house staff, they must be independent of the activity, area or process being checked (Article 2.2.4.6.29 of Decreto 1072 de 2015). The audit programme must define, among other things, the auditor's competence, the scope, frequency, methodology and reporting, and must take previous audit results into account; auditors must not audit their own work, and the results must be passed to those responsible for preventive, corrective or improvement measures (paragraph).

The audit must cover, among other things, compliance with the occupational safety and health policy, the results of structure, process and outcome indicators, worker participation, accountability, how the system is communicated to workers, SG-SST planning and implementation, management of change, procurement, suppliers and contractors, monitoring and measurement of results, investigation of incidents, work accidents and occupational diseases, the audit process itself and the review by senior management (Article 2.2.4.6.30). Senior management, whatever the size of the company, must then review the system at least once a year, taking into account, among other things, the audit results (Article 2.2.4.6.31).

Resolución 0312 de 2019 (SG-SST Minimum Standards) checks, in companies with more than fifty workers, evidence of internal audits covering all areas carried out at least once a year, the audit programme and its planning with the COPASST, and the annual senior management review with the scope of Article 2.2.4.6.30 (Article 16; standards 6.1.2, 6.1.3 and 6.1.4 in the table of Article 27). For companies with fifty or fewer workers in risk classes I, II or III, those items are scored as not applicable (Article 27), but Article 2.2.4.6.29 of Decreto 1072 de 2015 is addressed to the employer without distinguishing by size.