Corrective Actions

Closing one out

Marking an action complete always goes through verification. You write a note describing what was done, and attach a photo or document if there is something to show. The note is required and the photo is not, because many actions have nothing to photograph: a procedure rewritten, a permit condition added, a supplier changed.

The action then goes to a verifier to confirm the fix is real. Declaring something finished with no note, no evidence and nobody checking is the exact gap a corrective action process exists to close.

The list

Each action shows its available options as buttons, with the main one for that status highlighted. The list leads with anything sent back for more work, then anything overdue, then open work, work in progress, and finally work waiting on a verifier. Verified and completed work has its own filters rather than sitting in the main list.

Corrective Actions is the accountability backbone. Actions are created from inspections, observations, and investigations, then tracked here until they are verified closed.

1. 1
   Create or review an action

   Actions can be raised directly or generated from a failed inspection item, an observation, or an investigation finding.

2. 2
   Assign an owner and due date

   Give every action a clear owner and a deadline so it does not drift.

3. 3
   Complete the work

   The owner marks it complete and attaches evidence.

4. 4
   Verify and close

   The owner’s supervisor verifies the action actually resolved the issue, then closes it.

Reminders

Choosing your own schedule

Under Settings, then Workflows, you can set how many days before a due date the owner is reminded, and how many days overdue an action has to be before it escalates. Every organization starts on three days and one day ahead, escalating after a week, which is what everyone had before it was a setting.

• Advance reminders are a list — "7, 3, 1" reminds a week, three days and one day before. Clear it for no advance reminders at all; the owner is still told once it is overdue.
• Escalation goes to the owner’s manager, or to a person you name.

Seeing what was sent

The same area shows what the chasing actually did over the last ninety days. The list that leads is open corrective actions somebody above the owner has already been told about, ordered by how many times — an action escalated sixty times and still open is a piece of work nobody is doing, and that is the thing worth looking at.

Under it, Recent messages lists the last twenty sent. That is the half to check when you have just changed a setting and want to confirm the next reminder went where you expected. Anything the mail provider refused is called out at the top, with the addresses to check.

Escalation is as well as the owner, never instead of them. They keep getting their own daily reminder — suppressing it because their manager was told is how an action goes quiet.

Reminders arrive as one email, not one per action. If three of your corrective actions are overdue you get a single message listing all three, longest overdue first; a manager whose team has six overdue gets one escalation listing the six rather than six separate escalations. Where only one action is involved the email names it in the subject, so an urgent single item still reads as one.

• Due soon: to the person who owns the action, three days and then one day before it falls due.
• Overdue: to the same person, once a day while it is past its due date.
• Escalation: once an action has been overdue for a week, once a day to that person’s manager — or to your organization’s owners if they have no manager set.

That is at most one of each in a day, however many actions are behind. An escalation names whose action each one is, because the person reading it is not the person who owns it.