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A new focus for Audit International and our clients is ESG. But there is one thing all of us are perhaps not considering as much : ESG’s impact on the workplace.
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors are changing how companies conduct business in many ways, including:
– New ESG or climate-related disclosure regulations to comply with, especially in Europe.
– The need to effectively identify and manage ESG risks (including compliance, financial, and reputational risks), and integrate them within the existing enterprise risk management framework.
– Bringing a host of environmental and social metrics at par with financial information, especially with regards to data quality. There is a growing need for investor-grade ESG data.
– Ensuring that ESG factors give you a competitive edge in attracting investors, customers, and talent.
But there’s another change brought by ESG that’s not getting enough attention: The effects on workplace interactions.
– Firms that ‘get ESG right’ understand that ESG isn’t the responsibility of only one person. You can’t simply appoint a Vice-President or Director of ESG, or just place ESG under the Chief Financial Officer or Chief Sustainability Officer.
– Also, different departments can no longer work in their own little world with occasional collaborative efforts across functions. The important changes brought by ESG will also bring fundamental changes to the workplace.
The ESG team :
ESG is a team sport. People from different departments will have to work together as part of a single team.
You may be in Finance, Legal, Risk, HR, EHS, Sustainability, Operations, IT, or Procurement, but now, in addition to your regular teams and colleagues, you will also be part of the ESG team.
And your company’s ESG team will play a critical role because strong ESG performance drives corporate performance.
This represents a significant shift because suddenly key employees will have to align with a new set of stakeholders. They will have to work together with colleagues they might not have worked with before, or even knew. Here’s a sample of the types of interactions to expect:
EHS will have to provide key metrics to Finance for combined financial and ESG (or non-financial) reports.
EHS will also have to show to Finance and auditors (internal or external) how they provide limited or reasonable assurance on the data.
Procurement will seek guidance from EHS and the Sustainability team on how to capture greenhouse gas emissions data to calculate Scope 3 emissions.
HR will be asked to provide more tangible metrics on DEIB to Finance for inclusion in the combined financial/ESG report.
Did you bring together key stakeholders across departments as part of your ESG strategy?
Have you recruited members of your ESG team yet? If this is a topic you are actively hiring for, then please get in touch with us here at Audit International to assist you with any hiring needs you may have.
Audit International are specialists in the recruitment of Auditors and various Corporate Governance Professionals including Internal Audit, Cyber Security, Compliance, IT Audit, Data Analytics etc across Europe and the US.
If you would like to reach out to discuss your current requirements, please feel free to reach us via any of the following:
Calling
– Switzerland 0041 4350 830 59 or
– US 001 917 508 5615
E-mail:
– info@audit-international.com”
There is currently a misalignment in the world of Internal Audit. As Richard Chambers and AuditBoard’s 2023 Focus on the Future Report reveals, there are key areas where significant gaps exist between risk levels and planned efforts. The ability to attract and retain top talent, macroeconomic factors and geopolitical uncertainty, and business model disruptions due to the evolving risk landscape were all listed as top concerns for major organizations, yet only 13-20% of businesses have meaningful plans to devote substantial resources to these issues. Internal audit teams need to be ready to identify and address this kind of disconnect to ensure that their organizations are positioned for success in 2023. In this article, Audit International will identify three top internal audit trends, the challenges they present, and how internal audit teams can leverage software solutions to deploy team resources strategically against the most pressing concerns — setting themselves, and their business, up for success.
Trend 1: Velocity of Risk and Technology Change
Teams must continually provide assurance while adapting to evolving risks, digital disruption, and regulatory changes. Today we’re seeing significant contributions from the digital revolution, climate change, and stakeholder expectations, as the speed of decisions, the amount of connectivity, and the availability of data have all increased. Companies are learning that they have to balance pressures regarding what’s coming from governments, investors, and society as a whole. Stakeholders expect companies to act legally and with a conscience, and regulators are focusing on things like climate change, data privacy, and security.
Challenges in this area hit in numerous ways. First, there is an expanded purview required from emerging technologies and related risks. Second, there are repeated shifts to audit scope that put new burdens on teams. Third, there is an increased depth and breadth of data that brings along associated issues — including data reliability, related required team efforts, and resource constraints.
Technology can help audit teams develop solutions for these issues. Audit planning software accelerates risk and change responses from teams. With this preparation, teams can create risk-based audit plans with risk metadata to allow for efficient execution and continuous assurance.
Trend 2: Growing Internal Audit Talent Gap
Staff shortages, changing attitudes towards work, and a pre-existing skills gap are increasing talent risk and influencing how internal audit teams approach their work. Many teams are reporting that they are losing talent and struggling to replace them. Meanwhile, for the remaining team members, expectations are growing. They want to do more, and we need to keep them engaged. We have to support the folks that we have and give them opportunities to work in cybersecurity, sustainability, and other areas of interest.
The challenges created by the talent gap are as expected. Due to greater cost-cutting and efficiency demands often put in place by organizational leadership, teams are being asked to do more with less as headcount may be frozen or cut. There are the aforementioned difficulties retaining people and improving their skills, plus there are increasing specialization and training needs for team members.
A technology solution in this area is software with resource planning capabilities. This can help teams manage, optimize and retain talent by deploying resources more strategically, and it allows teams to improve individual and overall skills, efficiency, and experiences.
Trend 3: Align With the Business Objectives
The highly competitive corporate landscape and economic disruptions are driving the internal audit profession to refocus efforts on improved strategic alignment. Richard Chambers speaks often about auditors needing to become agents of change. When contemplating initiatives like cybersecurity, diversity, equity, inclusion, and third-party risk management, executive teams and audit committees all want better strategic alignment from internal audit teams. Internal audit must understand and embrace stakeholder needs and challenges so that we can better support their strategic initiatives.
The challenge for internal audit teams in this area is aligning audit with business priorities, which isn’t always as simple as that might seem. Plus, there is an increased requirement to validate internal audit resources. We have to start thinking in new ways, provide more value propositions, and be able to deliver more in less time.
Audit International are specialists in the recruitment of Auditors and various Corporate Governance Professionals including Internal Audit, Cyber Security, Compliance, IT Audit, Data Analytics etc across Europe and the US.
If you would like to reach out to discuss your current requirements, please feel free to reach us via any of the following:
Calling
– Switzerland 0041 4350 830 59 or
– US 001 917 508 5615
E-mail:
– info@audit-international.com”
Audit International are aware that public sector organizations face a variety of risks, ranging from cyber threats to budget constraints to compliance concerns. While internal audit teams in the government sector might not be responsible for solving all those risks, they need to make sure that they are following through with relevant risk management protocols.
Therefore, it is essential that internal audit teams are conducting internal audit risk assessments to figure out what these risks look like.
“Risk-based auditing ensures that the internal audit activity is focusing its efforts on providing assurance and advisory services related to the organization’s top risks… This requires internal auditors to have a working knowledge of basic concepts, frameworks, tools, and techniques related to risk and risk management,” explains the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA).
In this article, we’ll examine five tips to help public sector internal auditors build better risk-based audit plans. These include:
1) Define your goals
Before you get too bogged down in the specifics of running an internal audit risk assessment, take a step back and consider what you’re trying to accomplish. Doing so includes finding internal alignment within your audit team and with other stakeholders.
As Baker Tilly advises, internal audit teams “should meet with the various stakeholder groups – management, the audit committee, and the governing body – to explain the process, set expectations for the results and listen to any desired outcomes, as a means of adapting the approach or identifying other activities where internal audit can add value.”
2) Organize your data
Conducting an internal audit risk assessment also requires strong data practices. But before you can get to a place where you are using data analytics to identify key risks, public sector organizations often need to organize their data first.
Information might be held in a variety of systems that makes analysis inefficient, if not ineffective. Tools like TeamMate+ use a data exchange API framework to pull together data from different sources, such as governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) systems and enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools, giving you a complete picture of what’s happening within your organization.
3) Get agile
If you go through an entire risk-based audit without getting any feedback along the way, then it’s easy to get off track. For one, risks might have changed from the time the audit started to when it eventually wraps up. And when you present to stakeholder leaders at the end of the risk assessment, it can be tough to then incorporate their feedback into your internal controls and assurance processes.
Engaging in agile auditing can help. By breaking an internal audit risk assessment down into more manageable chunks — where different risk areas go from the planning to presentation stages in short sprints — public sector internal auditors may have an easier time adapting to change and incorporating feedback.
4) Go dynamic
Agile auditing creates a dynamic internal audit risk assessment. Instead of approaching these assessments as an annual occurrence, you can review public sector risks on more of an ongoing basis.
That means collaborating with other departments throughout the year to keep up with emerging risks, which is where good data-sharing practices also come in handy. Dynamic or continuous risk assessments can also result in more frequent reporting so that you can keep everyone in the loop and get their timely feedback. Having a strong internal audit risk assessment tool like TeamMate that can help you simplify risk scoring and create efficient audit reports makes a big difference.
5) Keep up with public sector requirements
Lastly, working in internal audit in the government sector means staying on top of general risks like cybersecurity and financial concerns, along with meeting specific public policy guidelines and regulations. Public sector internal auditors often turn to sources like Wolters Kluwer, which provides resources like webinars and other Expert Insights so you can learn what you need to do to strengthen internal audit as a government organization.
Following these five tips can go a long way toward creating a strong internal audit risk assessment and a better audit process overall. Even if it seems like your organization doesn’t face many risks, conducting a risk-based audit can help you stay on top of any changes to your risk level. Rather than being caught off guard, building a reliable internal audit risk assessment plan can help your organization control risk, however that takes shape.
“Audit International are specialists in the recruitment of Auditors and various Corporate Governance Professionals including Internal Audit, Cyber Security, Compliance, IT Audit, Data Analytics etc across Europe and the US.
If you would like to reach out to discuss your current requirements, please feel free to reach us via any of the following:
Calling
– Switzerland 0041 4350 830 59 or
– US 001 917 508 5615
E-mail:
– info@audit-international.com”
