Support 2 of 3

No business can succeed without some form of support.

This article is directly relating to the resources and support a business requires to achieve its goals.

Awareness

Awareness is closely related to competence in the standard. Employees must be made aware of the Quality Policy and its contents, any current and future impacts that may affect their tasks, what their performance means to the QMS and its objectives, including the positives or improved performance, and what the implications of poor performance may be to the QMS.

This is why everyone should be given some?training?in ISO 9001 awareness.

1. What should be contained in awareness training material?

Most people in your organization do not need to know the ISO 9001 standard thoroughly, and in many cases, they do not need to read the standard to be able to properly do their jobs in compliance with your quality management system (QMS). In many ways, it is more important that they understand why you are implementing your QMS per the ISO 9001 standard than understanding what ISO 9001 says.?

Here is a list of some of the most common topics that can be included in awareness training, but these can be changed depending on your particular company:

• Why are you implementing a quality management system? If you do not already have a QMS in place, then your employees will wonder why you are doing so now. If people see why you are doing this, they will more easily understand why they need help.
• What is a quality management system? Many employees may not know what a QMS is if you do not already have one in place, so give them a definition.
• What is the ISO 9001 standard? A brief explanation of what a standard is and how the ISO 9001 standard applies to a QMS goes a long way toward explaining that you want to make your QMS recognizable to regular industry practices.
• What are the general requirements of the ISO 9001 standard? Even for those employees who will not need to know the ISO 9001 standard, understanding the structure of the requirements is a good way for them to know how far-reaching your QMS will be within your organization. In this way, employees know that everyone is involved in the QMS. This link has an explanation of the ISO 9001 Requirements and Structure.
• Why are you using ISO 9001 for your quality management system? There are other standards, so why use ISO 9001? If this is the standard recognized by your customer base or your industry, then your employees should know this.
• How do you expect employees to use the QMS? This is probably the most important information in your training. After you have told your employees about the QMS and how ISO 9001 is involved, what do you want them to do? They need to understand that the processes and procedures of the QMS need to be followed for consistency, but also that they should bring feedback on improvements when they see them since this is part of the QMS. Employees are an integral part of the processes to make sure they work and help the QMS improve.

2. How should you create these training materials?

How the materials are presented is very much dependent on your company, and up to you. Many people will present this information through a PowerPoint presentation, but many other methods could be used: Your company's IntraNet, lunch and learn discussions, department meetings, orientation sessions, or even available written documents to read. The important part of the awareness training is employee understanding, so make sure you present in a language and method that your employees can understand. It can also be very helpful to allow lots of time for questions

Communication

Processes for internal and external communication need to be established within the QMS. The key elements that need to be decided and actioned are what needs to be communicated when it needs to be communicated, how it should be done, who needs to receive the communication, and who will communicate. It should be noted here that any communication outputs should be consistent with related information and content generated by the QMS for the sake of consistency

To start, the requirements state that “the organization shall determine the internal and external communications relevant to the quality management system.” While this may seem simple, it does entail that you, as the implementer of the QMS, make a decision: What do I consider relevant communications for my QMS? This should be directly linked back to your QMS scope, which is the definition of what your QMS covers within your organization. Remember what your defined QMS products and services are, because this will help to determine what communication you consider relevant to your QMS. Included in this determination of relevant QMS communication, according to the requirements, are the following five items that need to be included in your communication plan:

• What will be communicated?

You will most likely need to communicate on product and service?nonconformances

• When will you communicate?

When do you need to let shareholders and stakeholders know of important developments in your Quality Management System?

• With whom you will communicate?

Your list of people to communicate with might include employees, shareholders, suppliers, customers, business partners, or members of the public

• How you will communicate?

You could use your company IntraNet, email, phone, text, press release, or even in-person discussions depending on what you need to communicate and to whom.

• Who will do the communication?

his may change depending on the information to be relayed or the severity of the information. Critical failures may need to be communicated by the CEO, while smaller nonconformances may be communicated by a project team. You may even have dedicated individuals who can speak to the media about your company, and this should be part of your communication plan.

While there is no requirement in ISO 9001:2015 that your communication plan needs to be documented information it might be a good idea to do so if it is complicated. If you are a small organization that will have the CEO do all communication, and you will only communicate what is defined in your contracts and legal requirements, you may not need to document your plan, but if it becomes more complex with different people communicating to different parties, in different ways, on different topics, a documented plan might be a good idea.

It is also important to remember that these requirements apply to both internal and external communications, so don’t forget to include how you will communicate important QMS information to your employees within your communication plan.

• The message to take from these ISO 9001:2015 requirements is that it is important to plan your communication ahead of time, so as not to scramble to decide when something happens and you need to make a communication. When you do not have a plan, that is when people make mistakes due to high emotions rather than thoughts; and, if you need to communicate bad news, this can hurt your company’s reputation and credibility. If you have put in the effort to define a good Quality Management System, you owe it to yourself and all of your stakeholders to have a good communication plan that works for you.

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