How small audit teams can strengthen collaboration and communication
Effective collaboration and communication are crucial for small audit teams to navigate their unique challenges and deliver impactful results. To start, it’s important to establish clear roles and responsibilities. A RACI matrix provides a structured framework to map out responsibilities across audit phases and define roles in your audit charter, and should include the following:
- Who is Responsible for getting the work done?
- Who oversees or is Accountable for the task?
- Who needs to be Consulted to help with the completion of the task with additional information or support?
- Who needs to be Informed of the progress of a task or deliverable?
Why clear roles and responsibilities matter more in lean teams
Since it’s the gray areas that cause confusion and create errors, a RACI ensures that everyone understands their tasks, decision-making authority, and reporting lines for all phases of the audit process. As you clarify the roles of your audit team members, it’s important to match strengths and skills to the appropriate role to provide the most value. It is also important to encourage ownership and accountability. When you empower members of your small audit team to take ownership and set expectations for deliverables, timelines, and quality standards, the likelihood of their success increases.
Clear communication is also critical to foster effective team collaboration, especially in small teams. Promoting open and transparent communication will alleviate any uncertainty team members might have about what’s expected, especially if the project’s goal line starts shifting or objectives begin to change. Daily or weekly check-ins can help keep projects on track by sharing updates, along with any challenges to your progress. Use these check-ins to encourage open dialogue and create a culture where feedback is welcome, valued, and encouraged.
Communication tools, like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Slack, can help with small-team collaboration by providing an easy way to share updates and manage expectations. Cloud-based file sharing and project management tools ensure documents are updated in real-time, help maintain version control and provide centralized storage of your audit work papers for better overall teamwork.
Fostering trust, transparency, and psychological safety
As decisions are made, explaining the “why” behind the decision is essential to building trust. Trust and psychological safety are key to strong teams. Allowing employees to ask questions without judgment and leading with empathy, honesty, and integrity can impact job satisfaction and production. Recognizing contributions and celebrating small wins can also build morale and trust and promote unity throughout the small audit team. A unified audit team, no matter the size, directly impacts audit effectiveness and will lead to better outcomes that support organizational objectives.
Optimize time, workflow, and risk management
Standardizing audit processes ensures consistency, quality, and efficiency across your audits, especially for small audit functions. Smaller internal audit teams can often feel overloaded with more work than they can complete, so establishing standardized audit processes using resources like checklists, templates, and flow charts can eliminate guesswork and increase efficiency. These tools help you visualize steps and decision points to ensure audit projects stay on track.
Changes can happen quickly in the auditing world, so review and update your standardized audit processes regularly. Plan to conduct quarterly or semi-annual reviews of your processes and documentation to adjust appropriately and close any gaps in workflow.
Another way to optimize workflow is by ensuring your team is trained and familiar with your documented processes. If team members are unclear on processes and not following them as they are written, that opens the potential for inefficiencies and errors. If your documentation is updated, let your team know what has changed and why. Again, this links back to the important role communication plays for small audit functions.
Using a risk-based audit plan with limited resources
A risk-based approach can help your team prioritize tasks, enabling them to identify high-risk areas where they should focus their efforts. This can be especially impactful when your internal audit function has limited resources. As a small audit shop, it can be challenging to make sure you’re auditing the areas that need to be audited along with those that are required. A risk matrix or risk scoring tools can help you adopt a more stringent risk-based approach to prioritize higher-risk audits.
Apply time management and resource allocation strategies
For smaller internal audit teams, there’s never enough time in the day to get your work completed. Time management techniques can help you optimize your workday. Allocating specific time blocks for focused audit tasks can help reduce multitasking and distractions. You can also apply the SMART (specific, manageable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) theory to deadlines, breaking your larger tasks into smaller, more management steps. Setting alerts and detailing tasks with tools like Outlook and Google Calendar may also help you take control of your time.
In small audit shops, optimizing resource allocation is crucial for maintaining efficiency and effectiveness. A skills matrix is an invaluable tool for identifying the strengths of team members and ensuring tasks are assigned based on expertise and experience. Cross-training or upskilling team members is another key strategy for small audit teams, as it increases flexibility and reduces dependency on specific individuals. Outsourcing or co-sourcing can also provide additional support during specialized audits or peak periods.
Additionally, regular workflow reviews and agility in task prioritization ensure you direct your resources to the most impactful areas, allowing you to do your best work.
Maintaining audit quality with a small audit function
High audit quality is non-negotiable, even with limited staff. Aligning with professional standards, such as the Global IIA Standards, can help you establish and enforce quality within your internal audit function. Audit management software is another tool to ensure audit consistency and completeness within smaller audit functions. It’s also important to develop internal quality reviews and feedback loops. Use these findings to refine procedures and address recurring issues.
Continuous education and training should also be a part of the equation for success as it can help your small audit function maintain audit quality by staying current on regulatory changes as well as industry hot topics like cybersecurity, ESG, and data privacy. Proactive monitoring of RSS feeds, newsletters, and alerts is another good way to stay up to date on regulatory compliance. Automate the alerts you’ve set to track changes that impact audit procedures or reporting. This can help you adopt a risk-based audit approach by focusing on the areas most affected by new risks or regulations. The key is to be agile and adaptable as changes to your requirements occur.
