Why we need to be kept in your loop.
Imagine you worked at a Certifying Partner, let’s say SafetyDriven. You have an assemblage of COR certified companies in a database and you track each company’s status and progress as the year progresses. You also accumulate and store all of the documentation associated with each company’s annual COR audit.
That sounds reasonably straightforward, but in reality, it’s fairly complex. It takes constant management to keep a highly ordered system like a database from becoming disordered and eventually useless.
One use of our database is to track expiry dates and year-end submissions. If a company is getting close to the expiry date and hasn’t contacted us, we email them a reminder. Part of our service is ensuring no employer forgets or overlooks submitting an audit by the deadline.
Now imagine an organization consisting of two separate companies. Both companies submit an annual COR audit but share the internal auditor, since the organization owns both companies.
Along the way, one company is sold to a new owner.
The selling company doesn’t inform us that they have disbursed half of the company. Our database is out of sync at that point. The year winds down and as we comb our database for companies who haven’t submitted yet, everything appears to be fine. There is no record of the split or the new ownership.
On the other side, the new owner typically isn’t briefed about the COR process by the seller. They are unaware of their roles and responsibilities as a COR certified company. They don’t see the end coming either.
As you can imagine, a lapse in COR certification is a likely outcome for the company. Even if the issue is eventually identified at our end, the company can get jammed for time, being unable to send a company designate or dependent contractor for internal auditor training and then complete the audit before the end-of-year deadline.
This is just one example of the endless list of things that can go wrong when information is out of date. The takeaway is; whenever there is a significant change at your organization, please contact your certifying partner and update your company information.