Duties of the Internal Auditors in Post-crisis Period
The post-crisis period is the phase that begins with the end of the crisis and the effects continue despite its declining severity. In this period, the crisis has been brought under control in general and after the crisis, normalisation and restructuring efforts has started.
These studies are also useful for learning the measures to be taken against the crises that may be exposed to in the future (Erten 2010: 16).This period can be briefly called “Solution or Collapse Stage”. The organisation can bring a new momentum to its activities by eliminating the crisis with the solutions it applies at the moment of crisis. In organisations that cannot develop solutions during the crisis to successfully overcome the crisis, the possibility of a solution decreases depending on the severity of the crisis and the collapse begins (Komorowski 2017). The organisation’s relations with its environment are disrupted, and increased labour turnover, employee complaints, stress and panic can lead to the resolution of the organisation.
In the example of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, internal auditors can perform the activities listed below during the crisis time in some countries, and during the post-crisis period, in others, when it is assumed that the crisis time is over, and they shift to the stage of returning to normal;
• They can update the audit universe and risks to the universe by taking into account the experiences gained during the crisis in the macro-risk analysis of the annual plan to be prepared for the following period.
• By informing the management and audit committee about the disrupted parts of the annual plan prepared before the crisis and the activities carried out at the time of the crisis, they can lead the regulation regarding the disrupted parts in the plan to be prepared for the following period.
• If there are some deficiencies regarding the performance of internal auditors when they encounter some cases in the crisis period different than the normal period, they can plan training to increase their competencies within the scope of continuous professional development.
• They can work to develop an internal audit software that has remote access to the internal audit activity, provides an infrastructure for the review of digital data, not document-oriented, integrated with other IT software of the organisation, can communicate with all stakeholders, record all of the work in the database and is accessible to the relevant people.
• They can act as consultants to update the risk management activity of the organisation within the framework of the experience gained during the crisis.
• In consultation with management, they can provide consultancy services to make an objective assessment of the crisis and to transfer the experiences gained to the business processes (IAAA 2020). Thus, managers have the opportunity to see the deficiencies of the system they have established more easily. Moreover, both planning will be completed for completing these deficiencies in the following period and new scenarios will be produced for possible crises (Erten 2010:16).
The tasks of internal auditors mentioned above, which are for the crisis environment caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, can be improved and diversified according to different crisis scenarios by considering the internal audit legislation and regulations.
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