16 Human Resources Planning and Control in ISO 9000
HUMAN RESOURCES PLANNING AND CONTROL IN ISO 9000 MANAGEMENT COMMITMENT
Top management shall provide evidence of its commitment to the development and improvement of the quality management system by ensuring the availability of necessary resources.
Management Commitment in ISO 9001
Top management at the organization must participate in the implementation of the software project. Moreover, the management will play a critical role in the leadership of the implementation project. To involve management, determine how to structure leadership for the project is a challenge. One way of leading the project is to set up a leadership team. This team should be made up of the management representative, managers from each area of the company and top management. This team meets on a regular basis throughout the project, including during project planning. Project planning involves ensuring resources are available for the project, one of top management’s responsibilities required by the standard.
This team can be assigned the responsibilities for meeting the requirements in the standard. The team can also assign responsibilities for the implementation or transition project, watch the project timeline, resolve problems during the project and review and approve new procedures. It advises to keep minutes of these meetings that show attendees and assignments. This can be used to show management involvement and commitment to the development and implementation of the quality management system.
If some organizations are not using a team approach, top management will need to determine how they will be involved and be able to provide evidence of its commitment to development and implementation of the quality management system. Top management will still need to be responsible for the tasks listed for quality improvement.
Communicating these responsibilities to management
The responsibility to design and implement a Quality Management System has often been given to the management representative or a quality manager that are not “Top Management”. The system is implemented, and Top Management is trained on the questions that the auditor will ask of them. This is not enough to satisfy the requirements of the ISO 9001 standard.
How can the management representative, quality manager or other person assigned responsibility for the ISO 9001 system communicate to management the importance of their involvement, especially if they are not accustomed to being involved at this level? It can be done by educating the management on their responsibilities. They must understand the specifics of what they are being asked to do to establish and support the quality system. To print the table of Top Management Responsibilities, it is necessary to conduct a review with the top management. This will help to start a discussion on their role in the project.
RESPONSIBILITY AND AUTHORITY
Functions and their interrelations within the organization, including responsibilities and authorities, shall be defined and communicated in order to facilitate effective quality management.
ISO 9001: Responsibility and authority
According to ISO 9001, each employee needs to know who is responsible for the various elements of the QMS to ensure a successful implementation. The employee should develop and make available to all employees a list of key personnel and their job descriptions, responsibilities, along with an organizational chart of key employees as they relate to the QMS.
This should effectively define, document, and communicate the organizational structure of the QMS. Moreover, this method is only a suggestion, and hence other ways of meeting the requirement for organizational structure may be used. This can be done by developing an organization chart and by creating job descriptions to satisfy the requirements. Therefore,
- Clearly define roles, responsibilities and authorities
- Communicate responsibilities and authorities throughout the organization
INTERNAL COMMUNICATION
The organization shall ensure communication between its various levels and functions regarding the processes of the quality management system and their effectiveness. The Internal communication is the key to successful implementation of quality in projects. It is often achieved through the involvement of all people within the organization; It lets everyone in the company know that the team has started to introduce a new management system by holding basic awareness sessions for all employees. Therefore, it is necessary to make sure to retain records of attendance as this action will contribute towards satisfying the clause.
Communication is the key to success. Therefore, it is necessary to communicate goals, plans, progress and milestones first and then listen and ask for feedback. Lack of communication seems to be one of the main root causes for errors in business. Hence, keep people informed of the progress of the project; e.g. what’s been done, what’s to be done next and how the project is progressing against the plan. Make this process transparent and visible to all concerned; for example, place progress charts on the walls and notice boards. Employees that are not part of the implementation team may not be hearing as much about what is going on with the project and may think the project has faded away. Communicate its progress via newsletters, bulletin boards or meetings.
The organization needs to ensure that procedures to control internal and external communications and interfaces are in place. Particular care needs to be taken when dealing with communications from external parties, which might well include regulatory authorities, lawyers/solicitors, insurance companies, etc. In many parts of the world there is an increasing trend towards litigation resulting from injuries received in the workplace, so the need to manage the communication process is critical.
Communication and reporting within the organization are essential components for any effective management system. Poor communications will prove detrimental to any management system. Recognizing the importance of communication, the organization should establish and maintain procedures for internal and external communications with regard to its Quality Management System (QMS). Documented communication procedure(s) enable the organizations to:
- Motivate their work force
- Explain the policies, objectives, targets and QMS programmes
- Provide an effective means for personnel to communicate and address issues relating to corrective and preventive actions
- Ensure understanding of roles and expectations
- Demonstrate management commitment
All well as briefing employees during introductory presentations, it is necessary to use a combination of other methods to promote awareness, such as posters placed on notice boards and leaflets with pay-slips, etc,. Moreover, training sessions can be used to inform employees of the plan, how they will be expected to contribute and how their work will be affected by the project. Finally, communicate why the implementation is good for the company and good for the employees.
The effectiveness of the quality management system must also be communicated, examples of internal communication might include:
- Are we achieving quality objectives?
- What’s happening with customer satisfaction percentages?
- Changes affecting the quality management system.
Example methods of internal communication might include:
1. Team-briefings
2. Notice-boards
3. Intranet
4. Company newsletter
5. Employee surveys
6. Employee suggestion schemes
Provision of Resources
The organization shall determine and provide, in a timely manner, the resources needed
- To implement and improve the processes of the quality management system
- To address customer satisfaction
Assignment of Personnel
Personnel who are assigned responsibilities defined in the quality management system shall be competent on the basis of applicable education, training, skills and experience.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IN ISO
Once the project managers have received ISO 9001:2008 certification, they need to keep refining their QMS to improve their performance. Continuous Improvement is an ongoing effort to improve the organization’s products, services, and/or processes. These efforts can be:
- Gradual – seek “incremental” improvement over time
- “Breakthrough” improvement all at once.
The manager’s ability to meet their customer’s requirements is constantly being evaluated and improved in to deliver more efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility.
This is not a separate endeavor, but rather is part of the ISO 9001 Quality Management System. Feedback is evaluated against the objectives. ISO 9001 asks for Continuous Improvement of your QMS. One way is better focus through a more critical eye, and improving your knowledge to learn how to apply the tactics. Here are some tools to get there:
ISO 9004:2009 is titled: “Managing for the sustained success of an organization. A quality management approach” and is designed to help in improvement.
ISO 10014:2006 provides guidelines for achieving financial and economic benefits.
Both give examples of the application of the Eight ISO 9000 Quality Management Principles.
TRAINING, AWARENESS AND COMPETENCY
ISO 9001:2015 are dedicated to training, competence, and awareness, and the 2015 revision will include the same terms and requirements. The importance of competence and awareness is pretty self-explanatory; after all, it doesn’t matter how good your processes and documentation are – if people aren’t aware of what exists, then your Quality Management System (QMS) will not be effective. We have examined ISO 9001 Training material in this previous blog: How to create it, what it should contain, but for the moment let us concentrate on competence and awareness.
Competence and awareness:
There is no prescribed way to achieve competence and awareness, but here are some ideas that may suit many organizations:
- Create a periodic newsletter to keep the employees informed by email.
- Ask the production and quality managers if they can hold a 5-minute update at the regular quality and production meetings to bring first-hand updates to the teams.
- Create a “fun” questionnaire for staff to test their ongoing knowledge – schedule and plan some training on the basis of where the gaps are available.
- Incorporate the latest news about the ISO progress onto the company’s visual displays in the reception area.
- Ensure that the organization’s leaders are involved in the communications, which one can read more about this in the blog: How to comply with new leadership commitments in ISO 9001:2015.
- Critically, ensure that the evidences are recorded on training and communication.
- These criteria will be able to estimate what measures need to be taken to ensure that competence and awareness are at acceptable levels, depending on the knowledge of an organization. Again, in terms of any changes in legislation, ensure that the details are communicated, any questions answered, and training evidence recorded.
If somebody wants to ensure that competence and awareness are at an acceptable level during their audit preparation process, then they will need to provide evidence of the work they have done to facilitate this. Providing the auditor with documented evidence is vital, but a good auditor will quickly assess the staff’s knowledge and the importance they attach to the ISO 9001 process itself simply by talking to them during the audit. Therefore, it is important to provide the guidance and knowledge to them for ensuring that the workforce are educated and focused on the important aspects of the QMS and the 9001 standard. Given that knowing the objectives, expectations, and requirements of the standard are the fundamental starting point, there can be no continual improvement without competence and awareness, and remember that no continual improvement means no compliance at all.
The organization shall identify competency needs for personnel performing activities affecting quality. It is necessary to provide training to satisfy these needs. Moreover, the organization must evaluate the effectiveness of the training provided to ensure that its employees are aware of the relevance and importance of their activities and how they contribute to the achievement of the quality objective. It should maintain appropriate records of education, experience, training and qualifications.
PURCHASING CONTROL
The organization shall evaluate and select suppliers based on their ability to supply product in accordance with the organization’s requirements. Criteria for selection on periodic evaluation shall be defined. The result of evaluations and follow-up actions shall be recorded
PURCHASING INFORMATION
Purchasing documents shall contain information describing the product to be purchased, price and brand. The quality of projects are depending on job allocation, technical evaluation and user satisfaction. In job allocation, it is necessary to group the people and to allocate them project, budget and resources. Here, coordination and communication are also important. In technical evaluation, the tasks namely technical committee formation, specification, receiving quotations, matching specification and quotations and commercial evaluation must be carried out. Finally, in user satisfaction user interaction is necessary to get feedback. This can be achieved through discussions and getting suggestions for making a quality improvement plan.
SUMMARY
The ISO 9000 for project management requires a good software project planning which includes staff Assignment, training and purchasing. The plan can be achieved by good coordination and communication. It also discusses about awareness programs on ISO for the employees of the organization. It enforces quality through continuous process improvement.