Association of Local Government Auditors

Every organization is interested in having the most proficient staff while not spending unnecessary resources achieving that goal, especially in the challenging economy we are in now. In this article I attempt to share various techniques used by our office as training opportunities.

Teaching

Over the past few years we taught our staff using own expertise and talents. We ran classes like "The Art of PowerPoint" on creating effective presentations to report our work, TeamMate^TM implementation and best practices training to help staff transition to a new electronic workpaper environment, "Demystifying IT Auditing" to prepare staff for increasing attention to IT audits, "Yellow Book" updates to keep up with professional standards and guidance, and report writing classes to help staff develop their skills in writing the reports.

Additional teaching opportunities were created as a part of our office's succession planning for our Hotel Occupancy Tax audit initiative. Several years ago our Office hired a consultant to teach a few of our auditors to audit hotels for compliance with occupancy tax requirements. Over time, staff turnover led to a loss of staff with the experience necessary to conduct those revenue audits. Internal training sessions and the creation of manuals help keep the knowledge in the office.

So?

As a yellow-book shop we need about 1000 of those CPE hours per year. A rough estimate of the savings produced by 1 hour of in-house training for our office is $500. Over time, in-house training can save us thousands of dollars. To name a few more benefits, our trainers develop their teaching skills (which allows them to satisfy development requirements and eventually move up in their career ladders), practice presenting for conferences, and develop relationships with departmental audit shops from within the City of Austin that are invited to attend the training sessions.

Learning through teaching

Our office engages in collaborations with educational institutions like University of Texas (UT) at Austin and Texas State University. Teams of students from UT's McCombs School of Business come to our office to work on one of our audits to satisfy project requirements for an internal audit class. Our staff provides training on government auditing concepts and techniques, assigns tasks, monitors students' work, and provides guidance on preparing the teams' presentations and reports to satisfy the class requirements. We consider this collaboration a great opportunity for our staff to increase their understanding of auditing through teaching it to others. Additionally, for our junior staff this becomes their first team management opportunity.

Texas State students shadow our staff during their daily job duties for half a day. In those 4 hours, we teach those students about governmental performance auditing, the mission and goals of our office, our office's relationship with City Council and City management, and how professional guidance and methodologies are applied during audits. The shadowing program allows our host staff to boost their conceptual understanding of the profession and the Office of the City Auditor's role in the organization by learning to address the most important aspects of our job in a limited amount of time to students who had limited previous exposure to internal auditing.

Participating in career fairs is another example of our collaboration with colleges and universities. Explaining auditing to students in 5 minutes and keeping them interested is a skill that our staff has to develop to be a successful recruiter.

So?

The concept of really having to think through and understand what are you talking about to be able to explain it to someone else - learning through teaching - is one of the recognized learning styles. Besides benefiting local educators, our auditors conduct additional research to provide context to students and process the concepts to explain auditing methods without using excessively technical terms. As mentioned above, supervising staff is another internal development opportunity.

Teaching through learning

As our office implemented the TeamMate TM audit management software, several people in our office were assigned a role on our office's Support Team. Without having extensive TeamMate TM experience, but being expected to coach other and help others, the support team members were motivated to learn faster, be more proactive in their learning, and to find solutions to be able to help others. Additionally, as an office, we participated in group sessions to share our ideas and successful examples of using various forms and solutions for documenting our work as we learned.

So?

Support team members helped facilitate a smoother transition to the new software and the new processes that came with it. Additionally, this motivated our auditors to be proactive learners, develop coaching skills, and advance collaborative relationships and communication within the office. Not requiring external assistance or support during the implementation process allowed us to avoid incurring additional costs.

Learning

Examples of additional learning opportunities that our staff had are representing the Office and the City during the University of Texas's Open World program by conducting tours of our office and City Hall, participating in our office's hiring process, and revising our office's policies. 

So?

In the first example, conducting a tour of your work place may seem like an easy task, but seeing it every day and telling an interesting story about it are not the same. To prepare for a tour, our auditors get to study the history of the workplace, the other departments' interesting facts, biographies and priorities of the City management and Council. In the second example, being on the employer's side of the hiring panel helped our staff become stronger candidates for the internal and external career opportunities. Lastly, staff assigned to revise office policies have an opportunity to compare professional requirements to organizational requirements and office practices, which enhanced their understanding of the policy areas that they were revising. Additionally, it allowed staff to influence their job expectations.