Build Monitoring as Part of Routine Staff Meetings
To verify the compliance and effectiveness of a department’s operations, it’s important to monitor your internal control goals. Monitoring can be simple and does not have to involve hiring a vendor or buying expensive tools. When your department is audited, you might be asked:
- Do you have steps in place to monitor your daily operations to meet your mission?
- Do you have a process to validate that your staff are trained and are following operational and fiscal protocols?
- Do you implement routine reconciliation of your processes and outcomes?
Most departments already have monitoring activities in place, but might not call them “monitoring”. Now is a great time to start recording your routine and documented processes as part of your internal controls.
A simple and productive way to build active monitoring is through your routine staff meetings. Not only is the process simple and cost effective, but it includes staff input, creates informal risk assessments, and improves planning and outcomes. Staff meeting discussions also demonstrate the goal of integrating internal controls into daily operations.
Action Steps
- Add a topic to your staff meeting agenda to discuss a departmental procedure or process, a transaction type, job aid, or other protocol
- Document staff feedback on the topic, including how staff would monitor the process
- Share the notes with your staff and keep them in your internal controls folder for annual review
Bookmark our new CTR Compliance Corner as your one-stop shop for alerts and success factors that you can integrate into your daily operations to keep you safe on your mission.
Contact [email protected] if you need support from our Statewide Risk Management Team.