Organizational context- a powerful requirement
Mahesh Vaidya
Director at HPGC Pvt Ltd , Associate consultant with Arete Solutions Pte Ltd & Arete Solutions Sdn Bhd.
Hello professionals. Let me, at the outset, wish all of you a peaceful & joyous Diwali.
Those of you who are familiar with the new quality, environment and health & safety and other standards published by the ISO since 2016, you will appreciate the power ( albeit potential ) of this wonderful requirement in clause #4 of the 'High level structure' of these standards.
What this essentially does is that it gives a provision to the leadership/ top management of an organisation in order to introspect regarding its purpose of existence & doing business. This is something many of them may not be doing in a formal & systematic manner. The requirement gives an opportunity for an organisation to clearly identify all those stake holders/ interested parties, who are relevant to their QHSE management system. This, in my view, is something very basic but still not clearly addressed in many organisations.
It is common sense that if 'needs & expectations' of these relevant interested parties are identified, understood & consistently met, it has to help the top management continually improve their business.
Another interesting one is related to identification of internal & external issues which, in view of the top management, are likely to adversely affect their strategic plan/ achievement of their organisational objectives. Forewarned is forearmed. Planning of action to address these is a requirement in the later part of these standards.
Cut to the ground reality. In our experience as system consultants, trainers & auditors, there are several examples where the top management do not get adequately involved / delegates this to someone else. Worst case is when a management system consultant is asked to do this on behalf of the organisations top management ! I cannot think of a reason why such a wonderful opportunity is not optimally utilised by the management for improving their systems/ business performance.
To compound this even further, there are some third party auditors who, with their limited understanding of this requirement, mis-interpret it and insist on strange compliances to be demonstrated. I think an auditor must understand that it is upto an organisations management to take a call in this matter and impositions can be counter-productive.
I do hope better sense prevails and increasing number of organisations use this requirement to manage their QHSE risks & improve business performance.