Awareness 7.3

Awareness Clause 7.3

ISO Management Systems Standards Clause 7.3 is an outline of the requirements for team members to have awareness.

ISO 45001 OHS MS tells us what workers (which is an interesting use of words itself) shall be made aware of, and then there are six points about 'objectives', 'how they contribute', 'consequences of non-conformance', 'incidents relevant to them', 'the hazards', and 'how they can remove themselves from exposure to danger'.

ISO 9001 QMS gives us four requirements around 'policy', 'objectives', 'contribution', and 'implications of non-conformance'.

Awareness as a concept is an interesting one, it suggests that the workers (employees and those who may not be directly employed) must have some understanding of the management system and what it’s setting out to achieve. It goes beyond simple competence and way beyond the requirement to communicate although these are explicit requirements of the standards too. Awareness means the worker can contribute to the outcome and outputs in a positive way and not by following orders but by engaging in thoughtful endeavors.

WOW, what a clause!

“Spoon feeding, in the long run, teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon” E. M. Forster

As Managers and Leaders, yes these are called management systems so I guess there’s a heavy hint that they’re aimed at you Mr. and Mrs. Manager, it’s your responsibility (duty bound I say) to encourage and provide an environment where enquiring minds can flourish and become increasingly aware of the ‘what’s’, ‘how’s’ and most importantly the ‘why’s’ of an organization mission and purpose. Lofty words, but I hold that workers that are truly aware of these things can do nothing but contribute to the overall success of the organization in reaching its goals.

So let’s circle back to ‘workers’. Workers are those people engaged in doing the work of satisfying customer needs. These are often employees, but they could equally be agency workers, contractors, and volunteers. Everyone engaged in the process of meeting customer need (and if you’re in an organization and you’re not in some way engaged in meeting customer need then I have to pose the question of why you’re actually at the organization in the first place?), so I mean the cleaner, the sales person, the HGV driver, the accountant… everyone should have a clear understanding and awareness of how they contribute and what it means if they don’t.

Oops, that sounds like everyone in the organization has a part to play, who’d have thought? There’s no room for passengers and there’s no place for managers who aren’t engaged in ensuring everyone gets the information they need and scope to become aware and contribute.

Regrettably, as a Lead Auditor of Management Systems, there’s no requirement for documenting how awareness might be measured. The standards effectively pay lip service to it as a clause, a missed opportunity? As an Auditor the only thing you can do is to question those engaged in the value-adding activities during the audit and record your findings, and maybe go over any performance reviews, equally not a specific requirement.

Good practice for the organization would be to develop a ‘coaching culture’. This speaks to the organization taking an open-minded approach to management practice and putting in the effort to develop an environment where this could take root. As an audit outcome, this is probably going someway further than an opportunity for improvement allows for, although it no doubt is.

In some ways, 7.3 could be seen as an annex to 7.2 Competence and if your organization is going for the badge ‘cos it brings in more opportunity for sales then this approach is probably sufficient. If you take the view that apart from training and ensuring competence you have to ensure your employees are ‘aware’ of the key concepts, policy, objectives, how they contribute, and what could go wrong if not, then it’s fairly simple to demonstrate awareness. It wouldn’t be the worst thing, but it’s nothing like as ambitious as it could be.

As always thank you for taking the time to read this post and if you feel the need you can DM me with your thoughts, comments, and questions.

Philip Dawson MBA