Faq

ISO certifications help to confirm you meet internationally recognized benchmarks for business management. By meeting ISO standards, your company can successfully reduce costs, increase the quality of service through efficient productivity, safely, and maintain environmental sustainability. ISO certifications enable an organization to achieve better market exposure with global acceptance.

No. Though there is no legal requirement for ISO certification, it is essential that your company plans and closely follows a business management system. To have your management system meet an internationally recognized standard is better yet. Moreover, in today’s market, both vendors and customers want to rely on ISO-certified companies. Therefore, if you want to better meet customer requirements, or to retain your existing customers, get ISO certified.

ISO 9001:2015 is the most acknowledged standard for Quality Assurance and Quality Management. The aim of the standard is to provide you with a stable and established framework for meeting customer requirements and maintaining the quality of your service/product. There are numerous other industry specific quality management standards such as ISO 13485 Medical Device Management Systems and ISO 20000 for IT service management.

If you want the global standard for information security, get certified to ISO 27001. The standard enables your company to identify risks to information and take necessary actions to minimize threats. Customers want to ensure they are working with a company that can protect its information, what better way to do that than to get certified to ISO 27001?

Achieve business continuity management by getting certified to ISO 22301:2019. It is a standard that helps ensure business continuity, and thereby gives customers and vendors a high level of confidence that you will be able to continue to provide reliable service for years to come. Certification to ISO 22301 with an accredited certification body provides customers with confidence by providing 3rd party recognition of compliance to the standard.

In these times where customers are increasingly socially conscious, and where honesty is the best policy (Well, we hope anyway), organizations will do well to implement the standard ISO 37001:2016 for anti-bribery. Customers will be more confident that you comply with this standard when you are certified by a body that is accredited to a signatory with the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) and meets the certification body standard ISO 17021.

ISO 22000:2013 is the global standard for food safety management. We all know what happens to the reputation of a company that has a public food safety incident. Such incidents can end a company, let alone the emotional and financial impact of such an incident. Having the correct systems in place, even to manage the risk of employee sabotage, will be crucial to business survival. Obviously. Having a recognized system in place for food safety will help prevent such incidents and will provide customers, shareholders, and vendors confidence in your products and your company.

Risk management is the process of detecting, managing, and eliminating risk factors so that disruptive and emergency situations can be avoided. Typically, a risk assessment is part of risk management. The basic considerations for any risk assessment is to: Identify potential risks or opportunities Assess the likelihood and consequences of that risk If the risk is high, identify risk controls to eliminate or minimize the risk to an acceptable level. ISO has created a blanket risk management guideline in ISO 31000. Because it is a guideline, you cannot technically be certified to it, however you can implement these guidelines. It will be a wise business decision.

To achieve Occupational Health & Safety, purchase ISO 45001, implement the standard into your organization, and if needed, get certified to show your commitment to Occupational Health & Safety. Most importantly you will have a system in place to help avoid injury, illness, and legal/financial penalties. ISO 45001 is the global standard that offers a robust system to implement occupational health and safety in your organization. In some cases, certification to ISO 45001 is a requirement of customers. But most importantly, brings confidence to your employees, safeguards them, and shows you value them. Occupational health and safety (OHS) brings greater peace of mind, certification to ISO 45001 enhances your likelihood of achieving OHS.

Environmental Management means operating in a way that limits your impact on the natural environment. Environmental management can include protection of land, flora, fauna, water bodies and air. Companies who do this. manage their resources, energy consumption and reduce waste. Done properly, environmental management is an important financial decision, meaning that many companies that implement environmental practices save money. Companies that implement environmental practices and get certification to ISO 14001 can also improve their reputation and income as an increasing number of organizations are becoming more environmentally conscious and prefer to work with ISO 14001 certified organizations. Compliance with the standard can also help reduce legal and financial risk.

ISO 14001 is the recognized standard for environmental management. It provides a solid framework that suggests the best methods/processes for minimizing your impact on the environment. Something that benefits us all.

ISO 31000 helps you identify and implement a well-rounded risk management system for your business for any risk factor you identify e.g. reputation, environment, health and safety, business continuity, etc. The framework is designed for an organization to implement best risk management practice. ISO 31000 is however an ISO guideline, not a standard. While there is standard like terminology in the guideline, an organization therefore does not get certified to ISO 31000.

It depends on the type of certification you require, your industry and risk profile, shifts and number of locations. But most importantly, certification costs are based on the effective number of employees and subcontractor employees in your organization. In addition, certification bodies typically bundle their accreditation fees into your cost, and other fees. Certification bodies also have day rates that differ. Larger certification bodies tend to have higher day rates, but that’s not a rule. Most importantly, consider the value of certification and decide if there is a return on investment. The value of implementing an internationally recognized management system standard and receiving recognition for meeting the standard can have internal and financial benefits. All successful organizations have an effective management system, why not implement a global standard for management systems?

There is a very limited set of services that can be offered by an accredited ISO certification body. Services can only include:

• Training, including lead auditor training
• Gap analysis or preaudits
• Certification audits.

Other than ongoing surveillance, data collection and working within an organization, audits are really the best and most practical way to confirm compliance or noncompliance with an international management system standard.
One of the main benefits of a certification audit is the third party, independent nature of an external, trained, experienced, and empaneled auditor. Organizations can become too familiar, attached, conflicted, and therefore less able to objectively determine compliance to a standard.
We find audits are very beneficial when performed by a good auditor. Audits give a snapshot of compliance or noncompliance from an outsider’s view. Therefore, auditors are often in a better position to determine compliance to a standard and sometimes even identify ways to improve that will benefit the organization and ensure compliance.
The ongoing surveillance and management of the organization is best left up to senior management, managers and supervisors. Auditors can’t replace this. And auditors will not find every issue in an organization. But in its place, good and effective audits help an organization improve.
What are ISO management system audits? These audits are systematic checks of a company’s systems by viewing evidence or discussing compliance with interested parties to determine compliance or noncompliance with an agreed standard. Questioning is not the only way to determine compliance, and therefore auditors use multiple skills and techniques to determine compliance.
Auditors must be trained under a recognized scheme and have the necessary auditing experience before they can be effective and recognized. Auditors must also be independent of the customer they are auditing. This makes them more effective for the company. Auditors will record evidence of compliance or noncompliance with the customers’ chosen standard to back up their findings and the decision to certify or not.