When it comes to maintaining an effective ISO management system, there are several fundamentals to get right to help you avoid serious time-wasting and costly problems further down the line.
A robust management system can completely transform your operations; however, a weak management system that has been poorly implemented and that no one knows how to use on a day-to-day basis can really weigh a business down.
It’s not easy maintaining an ISO-certified management system, especially for smaller businesses where employees (including the business owner) are constantly spinning plates. But, with the proper fundamentals in place, businesses of all shapes and sizes can easily maintain their management system and ISO certification, enabling them to be more productive and efficient, which in turn can reduce costs, mitigate risks and increase profitability.
First on the list is keeping track of your management system activities. Without a clear sense of all the activities in your system, it’s easy for them to fall through the cracks.
What do we mean by ‘management system activities’. Quite simply, these are activities carried out at set frequencies to ensure your management system stays maintained and meets requirements. These activities include:
There can be quite a lot of activities involved with keeping the management system maintained, especially for more complex businesses. Some activities are mandatory ISO requirements, and your unique processes will dictate others.
The solution is to keep track of activities visually using cloud-based task trackings tools like Asana, ClickUp or Monday, which provides you and your team with a clear sense of the status of management system activities and an easy way to get real-time updates. Our preference is Clickup, as it makes tracking activities so easy and user-friendly.
It goes without saying that training is the most effective way of guaranteeing your management system stays maintained and that you’re not reinventing the wheel every time. However, finding the time to train your employees is not as easy as it sounds.
A basic training checklist can help you save time thinking of everything each employee needs to do and not let the most critical tasks fall through the cracks. Training checklists can be written down, or you can utilise screen recording applications such as Loom, which is a highly effective and flexible way of ensuring training is engaging. We here at Principal Compliance use Loom for lots of training activities such as onboarding, standard operating procedures, sales and project management.
We recommend appointing one or two employees (depending on the size of your business) as management system champions. These employees are responsible for keeping the management system organised and running like a well-oiled machine. Management system champions typically ensure documents are in the right place, registers are being maintained, audits are being completed, and other employees are completing their tasks.
Instead of having your business systems, SOPs, processes and other resources scattered all over the place, it’s a good idea to implement document management software such as Dropbox, Onedrive or Google Drive; our preferred software is dropbox as it’s very cost-effective and versatile.
The main things you’ll want in document management software include:
As a business leader, you know you need to delegate the maintenance of your ISO management system to someone, but sometimes you just don’t have the internal capacity. Having a management system expert come in with a done-for-you service can make all the difference. Expert advice can often be transformational for a business, and in many cases, the productivity boost is worth the cost.
Partnering with a specialist brings direction, accountability, and access to expert advice and proven methods. You can expect:
Continually improved systems in your business
More time for you and your team to focus on delivering an exceptional service
At Principal Compliance, we aim to provide our clients with the support, tools, and guidance businesses need to maintain ISO certification pressure-free for the long term.
If you would like more information on how we could potentially support your business, get in touch with an ISO management system expert today to learn more.
