This document has been made available by AgSafe BC and AuditSoft™. It is provided to AgSafe BC internal and external auditors as a guide for using AuditSoft™ to complete a COR audit of a registered AgSafe BC organization.

This document should be referenced in conjunction with the AgSafe BC Auditor training handbook.

This training program is the result of a 2023 modernization initiative that replaced the outdated PDF audit with AuditSoft™, the industry leading electronic audit software solution.

First, Download AuditSoft and create your account by following the instrustions in this article: Getting Started with AuditSoft

A license is required for every audit that is started.

To obtain a license:

1. Click on Get new license.

2. Select the AgSafe BC COR audit from the list of available audits.

3. Enter the Legal name of the company to be audited.

4. Click Submit Request to have your license request submitted to AgSafe BC

5. You will be returned to the AuditSoft™ Home page and the requested license with the status, License pending approval, will be listed on the left side of the page.

6. To check if the license has been approved click the refresh button. Once approved the License pending approval status will be removed and you are ready to start your audit.

Note: It can take up to 2 business days to have your license request approved. When approved you will receive an email notification.

Once the AuditSoft™ License has been approved you can:

1. Click on the license name under the Start a new audit column.

1. This will open a new audit and the audit Instructions page will be displayed. Read the instructions.

2. Before you proceed click on the training link and complete the AuditSoft™ Application Overview online training.

3. If you are completing a Team Audit, select the article and it will provide steps on instructions.

Now that you have completed the AuditSoft™ Application Overview Online training and you have started a new audit we can proceed.

1. The workflow for completing an audit is to start at the instructions in the left navigation menu and to then complete the items systematically from the top to bottom, completing each section in the left navigation menu before moving to the next.

This section lists the details of the company or organization that is being audited. Companies often merge or are acquired and AuditSoft™ supports changes in business structure:

An audit is a snapshot that represents the state of a company’s occupational health and safety program at a specific point in time. To ensure that the audit is completed in a timely matter, guidance is provided to the auditors on the amount of time that the audit should take:

To remind the auditor of this guidance:

After the Audit Information section has been completed (indicated by the green check mark next to each subsection) it is time to move to the next section of the audit.

An important part of audit planning is to determine which sites to visit, how many interviews to do and the number of observation tours to complete.

The worksites included in the audit must be representative of the organization’s overall operations. To determine the number of worksites to visit, the AgSafe BC worksite visit guidelines have been incorporated and AuditSoft™ automatically calculates the number of sites to include based on the active sites entered. The main office/shop must be included in the scope of the audit.

When updating this Site Sampling Summary page:

1. Select Add site to add every active site and the head office for the company.

2. For each site, enter the number of employees in each role that work at the site.

3. Now enter the number of employees that fall within the Joint Health and Safety Committee (JHSC) and New/Young Worker group at each site. These groups will be asked additional questions during the audit interviews. For example, of the 14 employees at the Vancouver site, there is 1 employee that is part of the JHSC and 5 that are New Workers.

5. Based on the number of employees entered, a recommended minimum number of interviews is calculated. This recommended number of interviews is calculated based on AgSafe BC interview sampling guidelines.

Next determine which sites with be included in the audit. To be included means that you will perform at least one evidence gathering activity at the site. There are 3 evidence gathering methods:

D - Documentation review.

I - conducting employee Interviews.

O - completing an Observation tour.

6. For other (“branch”) sites you may or may not include a documentation review (more about this in the documentation review section), interviews and/or observations based on the setup of the audit and whether you will physically or virtually visit the site.

7. Always include the head office in the audit. In most cases you will want to complete all 3 evidence gathering steps (DIO) at the head office.

Interview planning ensures that you select a representative sample of employees to interview. If the auditor determines that additional interviews are required based on organization size and diversity of work, the planned number of interviews can be adjusted:

After the Scope section has been completed, with a green check mark next to each subsection, it is time to move to the next section of the audit.

When gathering evidence, it is standard audit practice to visit one site at a time. At each visited site you may decide to complete any, or all, of the following evidence gathering steps:

With the use of technology and specifically online document repositories (Dropbox, SharePoint, etc.) and video conferencing tools (Zoom, Teams, etc.), some of the documentation review and interview tasks can often be completed remotely or from a single location.

When you start an audit, it is best practice to start with a documentation review at the Head office. Depending on the documentation available at the Head office you may not have to review documentation at other (“branch”) sites. During the documentation review there are generally two types of documents that are encountered:

To start the documentation review at the head office:

All documentation review questions should be answered at the Head office.

The only questions that do not need to be answered are those optional questions that may not be applicable and that can be marked as Question is not applicable to this audit.

The documentation review requires the auditor to determine the % Compliant based on the following available options:

1. Yes (100%), Partial (50%), No (0%)

2. Yes (100%) or No (0%)

3. Percentage Compliant. For example:

Reviewing documents at Other Site(s)

At the start of the Review Documentation section the differences between directive and operational documents were discussed. If all the operational documents required for the audit were not available at the head office for review, it may be necessary to review only those operational documents that were not available as part of a head office documentation review at other site(s).

4. Start the documentation review at the next site.

5. At the site, questions related to directive documents, that have already been reviewed at the head office, can be ignored and can either be:

6. Questions related to operational documents that are specific to the site, and that could not be reviewed at the head office, like site specific emergency response plans should be answered.

When you are completed your Documentation, you can select the Results column to view total Scoring and Comments.

After confirming the existence of the required documentation, the next step is to verify how well the health and safety system is communicated to employees. This is accomplished by interviews to determine if employees were included in the development of the program and to gauge their understanding of the OHSMS procedures and policies.

A representative sample of employees will be interviewed to verify specific audit questions. The auditor will determine whether the interviewee provided a positive or negative response. If an interviewee is unwilling to provide a response to an interview question it can be marked as no comment, which is treated as a negative response.

It is an industry best practice to interview employees one-on-one in a private setting where they can speak openly. To start an interview:

The Interview page will only list questions that are applicable to the role of the interviewee that was selected.

3. At the top of the page, based on the role, there may be an employee attributes that can be selected if the interviewee is a member of the Joint Health and Safety Committee and/or a New/Young Worker. These attributes are associated with additional questions that are added to the questions list if it is checked.

4. On the right of the page, there are 4 responses Thumbs up (positive response), Thumbs down (negative response), No comment, Question is not applicable to site.

Once all interviews are completed, note 1 below as all sections should be filled out and marked in green.

The final evidence gathering step is to complete a tour of the site(s) that were visited and to record observations. The purpose of conducting observations is to verify the information gathered during the documentation review and the interviews, and to get a sense of the overall level of compliance with the standards and company policies and procedures.

In AuditSoft™ navigate to Record Observations within the Gather Evidence section on the left side in the navigation menu and enter your detailed observation notes for each site toured.

The evidence gathering steps represent the bulk of work in any audit and after completion the Gather Evidence section in the navigation menu will be marked with a green check mark next to each subsection. It is now time to move to the next section of the audit.

The Audit Result section is where we draft the final audit responses that will appear in the report. Any notes that we recorded during the Evidence Gathering steps can be accessed and referenced to formulate the final audit response.

The information presented in this section must be detailed enough for the organization to address gaps identified in their OHSMS.

Audit Results contains 9 elements, and each element of the audit has several questions. When answering each question, it is important to keep the content separate and to not duplicate content. In general, there are three (3) text areas per question for recording:

Every audit question is verified during the Evidence Gathering process by appropriate documentation, interview and/or observations and by then assigning a % Compliant for each verification method used.

The % Compliant assigned to each question is automatically converted into question scores through one of the AgSafe BC automatic scoring rules. If a question has multiple evidence gathering requirements the scoring rules are applied to each separately:

After answering every question in the Audit Results section, it will be marked with a green check mark next to each element and sub element. It is now time to move to the next section of the audit.

The final section of the audit to complete is the (1) Summary information section. This section is an accumulation of supporting documents and attachments that must be provided as part of the audit submission. Each sub-section may include:

2. Guidelines outlining what is expected as a response.

3. An area for providing a written response and/or

4. The ability to attach a document.

After completing this section your audit has been completed and there should be a green check mark next to each element on the left menu of AuditSoft™. It is now time to move to the final section to submit your audit for quality assurance review.

You are now ready to review your audit before submitting it:

1. The Save PDF report button in the toolbar will create a draft PDF for you to review.

When you have reviewed the draft and you are ready to submit it to AgSafe BC:

2. Select Submit from the bottom left in the navigation menu.

3. Confirm that there are not any incomplete sections in your audit. If there are, click on the link(s) to add additional content and then return to this section.

4. Click Send to submit your audit to AGSafe BC for quality assurance (QA).

For answers to questions related to the content of the audit like:

Please reach out to AgSafe BC for clarification they can be reached at:

AuditSoft™ is a software company that implemented the questions set and guidelines as they were provided by AgSafe BC . AuditSoft™ cannot change questions and/or wording independent of approval by AgSafe BC.

If you have a question about how the AuditSoft™ software application works, there is an extensive online manual including many frequently asked questions (FAQ) responses that can be accessed at:

Or if you require software support, please contact AuditSoft™ at: