ISO compliance is essential for organisations that aim to uphold international standards and reap all the benefits that accompany those standards. However, Management Systems as outlined in the ISO Standards are by no means ‘set and forget’. As a key component of compliance to all the ISO Certification Standards is ongoing improvements, routinely re-evaluating and updating your Management Systems is fundamental to maintaining your ISO Certification.
If your organisation is concerned about non-compliance to your ISO Standards, then let today’s guide illuminate your path. Today, our team at S&J Auditing & Consulting are sharing their expert insights on how you can maintain ISO Certification for your organisation and reduce risks of non-conformities.
Key Benefits of Maintaining your ISO Certification
From providing more business growth opportunities to optimising operational processes, there are many benefits to attaining ISO Certification. But what are the key benefits of maintaining Certification to ISO Standards?
There are countless risks associated with failing to transition or maintain Certification, including contract losses, reduced trust with clients and stakeholders, and even regulatory non-compliance. If your organisation maintains industry licenses that are tied to Certification, then a lapse in your ISO compliance may result in the loss of those accreditations.
Here are some of the other advantages of taking efforts to maintain your ISO Certification:
- Reduces hassles associated with recertification
- Ensures stability for staff and stakeholders
- Supports contract renewals with partners
- Supports regulatory compliance
- Facilitates continuous improvements
- Promotes business longevity
How to Maintain your ISO Certification: 8 Expert Tips
If you’d like to reap all the benefits of maintaining ISO Certification for your organisation but are unsure what steps you need to take towards ensuring ISO compliance every day, heed these 8 expert tips from our ISO auditors:
1. Prioritise Continuous Improvements
Strong Management Systems aren’t static. Instead, they evolve alongside your business to make sure you’re always utilising high-quality practices. This is why continuous improvements are key to keeping your Management Systems compliant with ISO guidelines and thus, ensuring you can maintain your Certification.
Upon attaining Certification, your top leaders and compliance officers should implement processes to support continuous improvements for your Management Systems. You can use the PDCA Cycle framework as outlined in ISO 9001:2015 and other ISO Standards. Using a systemic ‘Plan, Do, Check, Act’ approach, the PDCA Cycle provides a linear model for identifying, evaluating, and rectifying non-conformities. Practicing the PDCA Cycle regularly and across all components of a Management System can support your organisation in maintaining a proactive approach to developing business process improvements.
2. Stay Proactive with Addressing Non-Conformities
Alongside prioritising continuous improvements, it’s important to remember that non-conformities are the biggest threat to your Certification status. Whilst a lack of improvement processes is just one type of non-conformity, there are countless others that you will need to be wary of prior to attaining your ISO Certification.
Some examples of the most common non-conformities include:
- Non-compliance with product specifications
- Inadequate or outdated Management Systems documentation
- Inadequate audit reporting and documentation of corrective actions
- Oversights in risk assessment and management
There are also non-conformities that are more common across some Certification Standards than others. For instance, for ISO/IEC 17025 (testing and calibration), common non-conformities often relate to inadequate risk management procedures, improper or poor calibration records for equipment, measurement uncertainties, and failures to ensure that external suppliers/providers also meet quality standards.
3. Continue Updating Risk Management Procedures
Being aware of the most common non-conformities for your Management Systems can help your organisation create more robust, focused risk management procedures. In other words, you should be including monitoring non-conformities in your risk assessment and mitigation processes.
Although all your supporting documentation should be reviewed and updated regularly to support ongoing ISO compliance, you’ll likely find yourself consulting your risk management documentation more than the majority of other documents in your Management Systems. This is because risk management processes are ongoing and iterative by nature. They have to be sufficient to accommodate all dynamic risks like workplace accidents, cybersecurity threats, mishandling of equipment, or unexpected machine breakdowns.
Alongside this, your risk management processes must also adapt to the integration of corrective actions, these being proactive measures taken to correct non-conformities upon their being detected. Whilst being proactive about non-conformities is the best approach to maintaining Certification, corrective actions as a reactionary measure, help fill in the gaps in the event that a non-conformity has been identified during risk assessment processes. If a corrective action must be taken, then the source of that non-conformity must be included into your risk assessment matrices and your risk management processes must be updated accordingly to support ongoing ISO compliance.
4. Invest in Employee ISO Training
The easiest way to catch non-conformities early is to make sure your staff know what they look like. This is where employee ISO training is guaranteed to be a vital investment in maintaining Certification for your organisation.
With routine employee ISO training, your employees can maintain awareness of the value of your Management System/s and the processes that support it. With this knowledge equipped, your staff can not only maintain an educated commitment to upholding these processes, but they may also feel encouraged to contribute to process optimisation efforts, and readily offer their insights during internal audits, management reviews, and other discussions.
5. Maintain Top Leader Commitment
Top leader commitment is a foundational component of Certification preparedness, which is why it’s outlined in virtually all ISO Certification Standards. With business leaders and department heads well-versed in all the benefits of maintaining your ISO Certification, they can lead process improvement efforts from the top-down, supporting greater visibility across all components of your Management System/s.
Cultivating top leader commitment can be done by investing in ISO training for your department heads and wider management team alongside general employee training. Similarly, you may even choose to incentivise your top leaders by recognising optimisation efforts that result in cost savings for your organisation or output (product or service) improvements.
6. Foster a Culture of Continuous Improvements
With staff and stakeholder ISO training, you can make sure that all figures in your organisation are on the same page when it comes to recognising the value of maintaining ISO Certification. However, application of knowledge is just as vital as imparting that knowledge. If your staff don’t take on the task of committing to improvements to processes and maintaining ISO compliance, then you may fail to mitigate your non-conformity risks.
The key to sustainable compliance is cultivating a culture of continuous improvement for your organisation. The strongest Management Systems are also driven by empowered teams – so encourage your staff to make suggestions and give their own contributions to your improvement efforts.
7. Conduct Regular Internal Audits
Routine internal audits are amongst the strongest opportunities for staff to make their own contributions to your improvement efforts. With your internal auditors and other compliance officers conducting interviews and inspections across your organisation, staff that are motivated to support ISO compliance efforts are more likely to communicate openly during your internal audits.
Conducting internal audits at routine intervals is foundational to ISO compliance, however the consistency of audit schedules can also encourage staff to participate more actively. Being notified of audits can also allow staff to come prepared with insights that they’d like to share, supporting your audits in delivering more effective, high-value findings.
8. Take Full Advantage of Management Reviews
What do you do with high-value audit findings? You collate them into internal audit reports to be discussed during your routine management reviews. Consisting of your top leaders, stakeholders, internal audit team and compliance officers, your management reviews provide an essential forum for discussing identified non-conformities and developing corrective actions. By discussing potential corrective actions prior to rollout, your top leaders and other decisionmakers can help ensure those actions are optimally implemented and deliver the desired results.
Ensure your ISO Compliance with S&J Auditing & Consulting
Maintaining your ISO Certification requires your organisation to develop, implement, and maintain improvement processes and procedures, and to roll out corrective actions with confidence. If you think your organisation can benefit from expert assistance with finding opportunities for improvement, creating robust improvement processes, and ensuring your Management Systems are updated correctly and consistently, then consult with our experts at S & J Auditing & Consulting.
Our team at S & J Auditing & Consulting providing services for dozens of companies across Australia, which removes the need for our clients to employ a specified role to maintain their Management Systems.
Get in touch via our website or by phoning 0409 933 447 to speak with one of our ISO compliance specialists today.
