Beyond Compliance: Reimagining EHS audits for strategic impact

Today’s EHS audit programs face rising expectations. Risk landscapes are shifting, regulations continue to evolve, and stakeholders increasingly expect audits to provide credible insight into performance, resilience, and risk control—not just compliance. At the same time, EHS teams are being asked to do more with less, making it essential that every audit hour delivers actionable outcomes and strategic value.

Building upon “From Compliance to Catalyst: How EHS Audits Must Drive Business Value”, ERM’s latest research brings together insights from a survey of EHS leaders across industries and geographies to examine how audit programs are being reshaped to better support business decision‑making and performance improvement.

EHS leaders highlighted several persistent challenges:

• Growing investment in EHS audits is not always matched by confidence in their ability to uncover and address root causes.
• Audit data is often underused or inconsistently communicated, limiting its strategic value
• Culture and trust continue to shape audit effectiveness, influencing openness and the quality of insights generated.
• Digital tools are widely adopted but AI remains largely untapped, representing a significant opportunity for accelerating audit transformation.

This report examines these challenges and offers actionable, real-world strategies complemented by self-reflection questions to help you evaluate your current audit program and where to strengthen it next.

Uncover how leading organizations are evolving audits into a strategic tool for assurance, resilience, and performance by focusing on:

• Risk‑aligned audits that target what matters most and support enterprise risk management
• Looking beyond surface‑level findings to address the systemic issues creating them
• Strengthening audit culture, trust, and engagement so audits are done with the business, not to it
• Digital and AI enablement to unlock deeper insight, efficiency, and consistency
• Advancing auditor capability to shift from policing to partnership

Whether you’re reassessing your audit strategy, exploring digital enablement, or looking to strengthen audit culture and impact, this briefing offers practical insight grounded in real‑world experience.