What are people’s opinions? The “big corporation” (took us over 2 years ago and has left us alone in most respects since then) is now coming over to do an audit on us, not only accounts but everything. Half the office/lab think this is good news and they wouldn’t be auditing us if they weren’t going to keep us and the other half thinks that it’s the beginning of the end and they are preparing to get rid of us. Who is right? What would the best course of action be… would quite fancy getting made redundant personally…

Depends on what they find!

Maybe I should look really lazy then and confess that I’m the cause of all the faults of the company! Maybe by just getting rid of me they think they can keep the rest! I like the plan!

With that attitude, you’d deserve to be sacked rather than be made redundant!

Now back to the original question is an audit good or bad? You’ll only find out in time but (working in a large Corporate and I undertake audits) you can gain some assurance by the fact that audits are just a part of daily working life and will have been scheduled in as a part of their audit teams work for 2009.

The people I perform audits on have now come to welcome them as I provide them with a free ‘healthcheck’ of their business and provide advice/highlight those areas they need to focus on. Only if they failt to action the points will they run the real risk of losing the business.

That’s quite encouraging then! We certainly do need a kick up our backsides as people are completely frustrated by the lack of managment and organisation! I would still offer to be the first in the line to get sacked though because I do need a change and do something else for a while and others here are more dependent on keeping their jobs.

Use it as an opportunity to improve any weak areas of processes/procedures that you have tried to act on before and not got management backing for, if it is on the audit they will more than likely be very supportive of any improvements.
Remember that any good auditor will have no axe to grind and should be impartial.

Sounds like it may be a good thing. If you’ve got half-decent processes in place that people stick to, should be ok, especially if people only do it differently coz there’s a more efficient/sensible way for what they need.
After our place was taken over by a big multinational, we were/are broadly left alone for many things – as long as you’re productive & cost-efficient they may bot want to rock the boat.