The audit was one of nine released by external independent auditors WLF that was tabled last week in Parliament by Education Minister Jeremy Rockliff.

The audit was ordered after a damning Integrity Commission report that investigated a complaint made against former TasTAFE chief executive Stephen Conway.

The TasTAFE board has accepted all recommendations made in the report and chief executive Jenny Dodd has said work has already gotten under way to implement all the recommendations made across the nine audits.

It’s expected the majority of the recommendations will be in place by December.

While the audit on recruitment didn’t go into specifics, auditors WLF said it had confirmed a number of instances where best practice recruitment processes were not followed.

“Several compliance exceptions were identified where best practice recruitment processes were not undertaken. WLF recommended improvements including the investigation of instances of noncompliance; improvements in quality assurance and compliance procedures; a review of HR resourcing by TasTAFE; and documentation of internal delegations for HR matters,” the report read.

WLF found TasTAFE had contemporary policies and practices in many of the areas it reviewed.

However, it also identified there was a “lack of leadership within TasTAFE in respect to monitoring the adoption of these policies and procedures” that lead to instances on non-compliance.

The future of TasTAFE has been at the centre of The Examiner’s Pick up the Tools campaign.

The campaign, which has run over the past month, aims to examine the role TasTAFE has to play in this education landscape and how to create a robust future for the public vocational education provider.

It also aims to highlight the successes of the sector and of those who graduate from TasTAFE.

The audit report noted a “number of series compliance exceptions”, the impact of which it classified as high.

Classification of compliance issues as high means the issue “warrants immediate attention by management.”

Without intervention, the issues “could have, or is having, a major adverse affect on the ability to achieve organisational and process objectives.”

Issues of fairness and instances where best practice recruitment processes weren’t followed were not confined to one process or segment of employees.

“We note the findings of this audit to not reflect on the suitability of candidates who have been appointed to roles, but rather the processes undertaken by managers responsible for recruitment in ensuring that the process was compliant with policy and all legal requirements,” the report read.

The recruitment audit was limited in its recommendations due to the limited scope it had available to audit.

Auditors WLF said it requested data from the Education Department on a list of appointments made from July 1 2015 to May 2017.

However, the data received was “insufficient” to identify the total number of recruitment.

“This was further complicated by the restructure of TasTAFE, which occurred through the period, which meant there were a large number of staff transferred into new positions that did not require formal recruitment,” the report read.

“Due to the weaknesses identified in the data source we cannot be assured that we have identified all appointments relevant….our report should therefore be read with this limitation of scope in mind.”

TasTAFE’s board has accepted all recommendations made in the report, and welcomed the release of the audits.

“The board welcomes the opportunity to work with the executive and staff to further improve integrity and governance across the organisation,” it said in its response to the audit report.

“Action has already commenced on building a stronger ethical culture in line with the public sector code of conduct through the provision of ethics training for managers.

The recruitment report was one of nine audits released last week. The other areas were: credit card use, travel and entertainment, conflicts of interest, contract services, remuneration, human resources, misconduct and personal benefits.