Why Organizational Audits Matter: Building Better Work from the Inside Out
Introduction – What Are We Missing at Work?
If you're going to collect data, you need to have a purpose. And not just because you were told to collect it, or you can check off a compliance box. Data should deepen our understanding, inform action, and shape our efforts to continuously improve.
When it comes to organizational wellness, quality data about the workforce is crucial to understanding the employee experience and making the connection to the health of the organization. But too often, businesses collect data on employees and then do nothing meaningful with it. If there's one thing I've learned in my career, it's that if you're going to ask employees to share their views, you better be ready to act on it, good or bad.
Today's edition of the Better Boundaries Brief is about the importance of organizational audits, or a methodical examination and review of how the organization is performing. From the wellness perspective, this can look like:
Employee engagement surveys
Review of policies directly or indirectly affecting employee wellbeing
A review of programs and offerings to support health & wellbeing
Focus groups and key informant interviews to understand the stories behind the data
"Data are not taken for museum purposes; they are taken as a basis for doing something. If nothing is to be done with the data, then there is no use in collecting any. The ultimate purpose of taking data is to provide a basis for action or a recommendation for action. The step intermediate between the collection of data and the action is prediction." W. Edwards Deming
I once worked at an agency that launched an employee engagement survey as part of our strategic plan. At the time, one of our priorities was to ensure that we had an engaged, empowered, and high-performing workforce that supports health status improvement. We used a Results Based Accountability framework, and one indicator to assess our priority was the Percent of Employees Engaged. We had a baseline of 64% and a goal of 75%. This was in 2017.
According to Gallup, as of 2023, 33% of the U.S. full- and part-time workforce was engaged, while 16% was actively disengaged.
While our agency was doing well, relatively speaking, we still found opportunity for improvement. One of the most stark findings was that employees very clearly felt that managers were often promoted without proper training and support AND managers felt that they didn't have enough training and support.
We used these results to implement management training, and it was a program that I coordinated and implemented. Transformation didn’t happen overnight, but it was proof that organizational audits, when done well, can spark real change.
Data Highlights – Why Audits Make a Difference
📊 A 2015 Gallup report found that 70% of variance in employee engagement is directly tied to the manager. This means that the "manager's actions, behaviors, and leadership style are the primary drivers of whether a team feels engaged or disengaged at work." This number was still accurate in Gallup's 2024 State of the Global Workplace report.
→ Gallup, Managers Account for 70% of Variance in Employee Engagement
📉 According to McKinsey research, between 20 and 30 percent of critical roles in many organizations aren’t filled by the most appropriate people.
→ McKinsey & Company, The State of Organizations 2023
🧩 Job satisfaction is impacted by poor communication, lack of feedback, and inadequate support, issues that are often revealed through internal audits.
→ Academy to Innovate HR, Job Dissatisfaction: A How-To-Prevent-It Guide for HR
Equity & Inclusion – Who’s Being Heard (and Who’s Not)?
🎯 Women, employees of color, LGBTQ+ employees, and employees with disabilities often report lower satisfaction with workplace culture, psychological safety, and leadership responsiveness.
💬 When audits fail to collect demographic data or skip over intersectional analysis, these voices get lost in the averages.
🛑 If you want to close equity and inclusion gaps, you have to look for them. Organizational audits create space for transparency, accountability, and listening.
Boundary Highlight – Audits as a Boundary Practice
Organizational audits protect boundaries in three key ways:
✔️ They identify a baseline and help define concrete priorities.
✔️ They give voice to workers who may not feel safe speaking up.
✔️ They support leadership in building cultures of care.
Law & Policy – Organizational Strategy as Prevention
⚖️ Even in today's shifting regulatory environment, OSHA, EEOC, and other federal agencies still guide the way that employers ensure physical safety, address psychological safety, and support employee mental health and wellbeing.
📑 Strategic audits provide documentation that employers are identifying and addressing risks, like risks to mental health, bias in personnel actions and opportunities, and leadership gaps. They also identify financial risks associated with employee turnover and active disengagement.
Take Action – What Can You Do Today?
✅ Individuals
If your organization offers surveys, participate! Your voice matters, and a more robust data set provides more actionable insights.
Notice patterns in communication, workload, and culture and connect with trusted colleagues or supervisors to ask questions and discuss observations.
🏢 Organizations
Conduct regular employee engagement surveys with disaggregated data.
Use findings to implement training, revise policies, and assess leadership gaps.
Don’t just audit—act. Share results transparently and involve staff in solutions.
Ensure that leadership team members are actively engaged in implementation and modeling inclusive and supportive behavior.
🌍 Systemic
Invest in leadership pipelines that center a holistic assessment of management ability that doesn't just rely on technical expertise.
Require management training as part of promotions and onboarding.
Ensure that leadership development opportunities are provided and accessible to all employees who want to engage in them.
Establish programs that support workforce development, including internships, apprenticeships, and leadership development academies.
Closing Thought
I bring my expertise as a lawyer, Certified Wellness Practitioner, and public health professional to organizational audits through my RESET framework. Audits - in the many forms they can take - are foundational to understanding organizational culture. If we want to build better boundaries at work, we have to start with better listening. Organizational audits help us ask: What’s working? What’s not? And how can we do better, together?
📆Book a Discovery Call
📧 Let's connect: create@thedawnlab.com
“Engagement is not a characteristic of employees, but rather an experience created by organizations, managers and team members.”