ISO Standards are often a must have due to stakeholder requirements, whether that’s from your customers, investors or regulators.

The need for multiple ISO certifications is also becoming more common, which can become a tricky task to juggle if you’re managing these as separate systems. The solution? An Integrated Management System.

In this episode, Steph Churchman explains what an integrated management system is, how the Annex SL format facilitates integration and the benefits and challenges involved with an IMS.

You’ll learn

· What is an Integrated Management System?

· Why consider an IMS?

· What is the Annex SL format?

· What are the benefits of an IMS?

· What are the challenges of implementing an IMS?

Resources

· Isologyhub

In this episode, we talk about:

[02:05] Episode Summary – Steph explains what an Integrated Management System is, how the Annex SL format makes this possible and dives into the benefits and challenges associated with an IMS.

[02:20] What is an Integrated Management System? Often abbreviated to ‘IMS’, it simply refers to a management system based off certification to or alignment with multiple ISO Standards.

For example, a company may be certified to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 but will only have 1 Management system rather than 3 sperate systems.

[03:30] What is the Annex SL format? The Annex SL format was applied to most ISO Standards back in 2015. This format helped to create a consistent 10 clause structure which makes it simple to integrate multiple ISO Standards.

Before this was introduced, not all Standard clauses aligned, making it difficult to audit against and combine with other Standards, even if they had similar requirements.

[04:00] The Annex SL 10 Clause Structure explained:–

· The first 3 clauses are explanatory clauses. These give you more context for the purpose of the standards, as well as providing a helpful glossary of terms and definitions that you’ll come across in the Standard. These clauses aren’t audited against

· Clause 4 - Context of the Organisation: This is where you’ll be establishing your scope, your interested parties and looking at where your risks and opportunities are. It’s setting the foundation for your Management system.

· Clause 5 Leadership: This is where you’ll need commitment from top management. They will need to be involved with tasks such as establishing key policies, assigning roles & responsibilities and communicating the Management System once you’re ready to launch it.

· Clause 6 Planning: This is where you will look at the risks and opportunities raised during the context phase and plan what actions you’ll take to address them. This is in addition to setting your business objectives.

· Clause 7 Support: This is where you will establish the resources you have available to create and facilitate the running of the Management system. This clause gives you guidance for considerations such as people, infrastructure, monitoring and measurement needs, competence of staff and key communication requirements.

· Clause 8 Operation: This clause is where the main differences can be found between ISO Standards. It provides guidance on considerations for key processes and procedures relating to the Standard focus. ISO 9001 for example contains a rather chunky clause 8 as it details requirements for products and services, including the development and provision of them. While ISO 27001’s clause 8 focuses more on information security risk assessments and risk treatment plans.

· Clause 9 Performance Evaluation: This is where you establish the who, what and when involved in the monitoring, measurement and evaluation of your management system. This is also where Internal Auditing requirements are detailed.

· Clause 10 Continual Improvement: This is the driving force of all ISO Standards. In this last clause you’ll find requirements for Management review and non-conformity and corrective action. That’s simply about reviewing the effectiveness of the Management system and putting plans in place to correct any non-conformities raised, or act on any of those opportunities for improvement.

[08:00] IMS Benefit #1: Cost Saving – ISO Implementation can get costly, especially if you’re investing in a consultancy to help you in addition to the certification body costs involved in the actual assessment.

You can save money by implementing multiple standards at the same time. At Blackmores, we’re happy to help you implement multiple ISO’s at the same time. This saves on the time spent if you were to do them separately, as we typically combine elements of the selected standards in project days such as during a Gap analysis, document creation and internal audits.

On the certification body side, you can save on assessment days by assessing against an integrated management system, rather than assessing against 2 separate management systems. Many will do their best to accommodate integrated assessment and surveillance audits.

[09:05] IMS Benefit #2: Reduced Duplication and Increased Efficiency - There are elements of a Management system that you can combine to not only save money but also reduce document and process duplication, which leads to a more efficient system.

We’ve seen companies trying to manage separate systems over the years, and often times they end up just causing confusion, or only being adhered to by specific departments within a business. This results in duplicated work as shared elements of compliance are being managed in two different ways, often with slightly different styles of documents.

Save yourself the trouble and headache by integrating all relevant management system documentation into 1 system. It makes it so much easier to update and keep on top of, and to enable it to act as a real tool for continual improvement rather than being thought of as a chore to upkeep.

[10:10] IMS Benefit #3: Improved Communication and Collaboration - An integrated system encourages communication between all elements of your business.

This holistic approach is often broken down into silos for select departments to focus on select objectives, which in turn encourages invested teamwork which will contribute to the business’s success as a whole.

Internal Audits will also allow employees from every level to feedback to the system, highlighting key areas for improvement that could be rolled out. We see a lot of companies leveraging integrated management systems in various ways, often using them as a springboard to launch company wide initiatives that encourage further collaboration.

These are then tracked, monitored and reported on in a similar way to other company objectives, all guided by the processes put in place by the Management system.

[11:20] IMS Benefit #4: Enhanced Risk Management - Integrating multiple Standards will mean you have greater comprehension and risk assessment of multiple different aspects across your business, such as quality, environmental and Health & Safety.

Many start with ISO 9001, as that’s a fantastic solid foundation for a Management system, it builds in all the core policies and procedures needed to run a business smoothly, but it doesn’t touch on the specifics of environmental management or information security. For that, you’d need to integrate other standards to ensure you have robust measures to tackle those other elements.

[12:15] IMS Benefit #5: Streamlined Auditing Processes - Internal Audits act as a good measure of where things are going right and wrong, in addition to being a dummy run for your certification assessment if it’s your first time going through the process.

Internal Audits are also an element which can be combined, this allows you to save time for the auditees, which reduces the amount of disruption they may cause overall. It also reduces the overall amount of audit reports for review, saving a duplication of effort on auditing similar elements across multiple standards.

[13:00] IMS Benefit #6: Better Decision-Making - By having a more unified view of all processes and performance across different management areas, leadership can make more informed decisions.

ISO Standards require a Management Review, which is where you can review audit findings and put plans in place to resolve any non-conformities and address any opportunities for improvement. Don’t forget to highlight any achievements and lessons learned too! As these can be applied elsewhere in the business.

[14:00] IMS Benefit #7: Increased Stakeholder Confidence - ISO Standards are a mark of best practice, they are an internationally recognised seal of approval that proves your commitment to either quality, safety and sustainability.

This competitive advantage will also serve you when going for funding or to tender.

[14:40] IMS Benefit #8: Improved Organizational Performance and Culture - An integrated Management system ensures that everyone is unified in their way of working. It also fosters a culture of continual improvement, that encourages participation from all levels within the business.

Having a central integrated system makes things simple for everyone to understand. No one has to search out different processes for a separate quality and environmental management system, when they could all be combined and stored in 1 location.

An integrated management system approach also allows for you to collaborate across multiple different focus areas such as quality, safety and sustainability. Objectives for each can be siloed and focused on by select departments, but can still be contributed to from any part of the business.

Be open about the results in different areas of the business and encourage suggestions for improvement, this is how you’ll foster a culture of continuous Improvement.

[16:05] IMS Challenge #1: Initial set-up and resourcing - Implementing ISO Standards aren’t a small task. If you’re implementing multiple ISO Standards from the start, you’ll need to consider the people, time and expertise needed to complete the task.

This may include the assistance of a dedicated ISO consultancy, as they’ll have the expertise to guide you through the process smoothly. At Blackmores, we can help you implement an IMS that is bespoke to the way you work. It may be tempting to go with an out of the box solution, but these would need tailoring to be at all effective and likely won’t get you past certification with a UKAS accredited Certification Body.

Learn about the differences between a UKAS and Non-UKAS accredited Certification Body on one of our previous podcasts.

[17:30] IMS Challenge #2: Resistance to change - People will be used to working a certain way, often siloed into systems unique to their departments. Or if you’ve already held 1 ISO certification, integrating others will mean change to that existing system that others may not be open to at first. It will involve either new or updated policies and procedures that will take some time for everyone to adapt to.

The key here is communication. Not only to communicate the change, but allow people to voice any concerns they have about new ways of working. You may also need to issue additional training to help others adapt.

[18:20] IMS Challenge #3: Lack of top leadership commitment - If you want people to care about the management system, commitment to it needs to come from the top down. If the leadership doesn’t care about it, why should anyone else?

Any good leadership should want a holistic approach for monitoring various elements of the business, if only to make more informed decisions. An integrated Management system can provide the base to facilitate this, and it’s in leaderships best interest to keep ahead of any emerging challenges or opportunities that can be leveraged.

[19:10] IMS Challenge #4: Integration of IT systems and data - Integrating your management system may require the integration of IT systems and existing data. If you have separate management systems currently, they may be operating on different databases or formats that may be difficult to combine.

In some cases, an integrated management system is a good opportunity to refresh the way you work, it could be seen as a chance to look at other tech options out there that could be more cost effective or introduce new much needed functionality.

[19:50] IMS Challenge #5: Maintaining Scope and Avoiding Over-Complication - There is a risk that you may try to bite off a bit more than you can chew when integrating management systems.

We recommend starting with a smaller scope, as this acts as a good test that can be rolled out to the wider business if it’s effective. Many may start with just one site and then seek to roll out the changes to the wider business over the course of a few years.

This is definitely an approach we encourage, as each location will have its own teething problems to work through, which is much more manageable when tackled in chunks at a time rather than all at once.

If you’d like any assistance with Integrated Management System Implementation, feel free to get in touch with us, we’d be happy to help.

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#222 What Are The Benefits Of An Integrated Management System?