A comprehensive review of safety audits: ensuring workplace safety and compliance in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Safety audits are systematic evaluations of an organisation’s safety management system, policies, procedures, and practices to identify potential hazards and assess compliance with relevant regulations and standards. This article provides a comprehensive review of safety audits, focusing on their role in ensuring workplace safety and compliance in Zimbabwe. A comprehensive search was conducted across various databases, including PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Sage Publications, to gather relevant articles. The relevance of the literature to the topic being studied was assessed by utilising abstracts and key words such safety audits and safety standards. The article examines multiple research studies carried out on the topic and presents a comprehensive summary of the present condition of safety audits in Zimbabwe. The findings indicated that the objective of safety audits is to proactively identify areas for improvement and implement corrective actions to prevent accidents, injuries, and occupational illnesses. The study indicates types of safety audits including compliance audits and management system audits. The article delves into the key components of safety audit processes, benefits of safety audits and challenges and limitations of safety audits in Zimbabwe. The article concludes by emphasising the importance of continuous improvement in safety audits.