If your company is looking to adopt a new compliance system, there are various options you can choose from depending on your particular goals and priorities. While implementing a single management system can offer your business significant benefits, integrating multiple standards simultaneously can take your efficiency in managing compliance to new heights.
Quality, Environmental, and Safety management systems are commonly combined, helping organisations boost their compliance effectiveness and reduce effort across all operations. When different standards are integrated with each other, such as ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 to establish a HSE management system, connections are strategically formed between them. By doing this, companies can form similar processes at all organisational levels, making procedures easier to execute, manage and monitor. They can also avoid duplication when there is a crossover in the standards they’re introducing, allowing for them to optimise their allocation of valuable resources.
By integrating numerous management systems, your business can improve efficiencies and streamline processes organisation-wide. This is just one of the many benefits your company may experience once having adopted an integrated management system.
Improve Performance in Key Areas
Once you’ve determined which standards your business is going to focus on, you’ll be able to develop an integrated management system that directly targets key areas of concern. By implementing multiple standards concurrently, organisations can focus on their distinct organisational goals and make various improvements to their current processes.
Businesses will often aim to achieve the following outcomes:
- Exceptional quality management across all operations, helping them consistently deliver excellent products or services;
- The improvement of safety by identifying, addressing and eliminating risks organisation-wide;
- Boosting productivity by introducing and maintaining efficiencies.
When implementing an integrated management system, continually monitoring your organisational success is crucial. This will assist you in meeting business objectives, while also helping you continue to refine and further advance your compliance.
Establishing Consistency Across all Operations
As their business grows in size and complexity, companies can often struggle to efficiently improve multiple standards that have been introduced independently. This is where integrated management systems can be particularly advantageous, as they create consistency across all of an organisation’s operations.
An integrated management system simplifies and streamlines the implementation and maintenance of your standards. This means that when changes are required or preferable, making amendments to your current approaches is often far easier. Thus, your business can reduce the amount of time and money that needs to be spent on updating processes.
Consistency can also help organisations establish common strategies, objectives and direction across all organisational levels. In turn, this assists in instilling a shared vision and focus among numerous members of their company. With everyone working towards mutual aspirations, your organisation is far more likely to inspire a positive culture and reach your goals sooner.
Reduce Costs
By integrating various management systems, businesses are able to optimise their processes, while also enhancing their use and allocation of resources.
Improving efficiencies and procedures organisation-wide can help your organisation reduce the amount of time needed to complete certain activities. With an integrated management system, you can pinpoint areas that negatively impact productivity and introduce viable solutions to address downfalls. Refining, updating and improving your processes means that, during day-to-day operations, your employees will have more time to spend completing meaningful, value-driven tasks. This, of course, will help you lower costs across all organisational levels.
Typically, integrated management systems will reduce the long-term costs of achieving continued compliance. Organisations are consistently monitoring processes, so they can identify and resolve threats before they impose significant financial burdens.
An integrated management system can also be less time-consuming and costly to update than standards that have been independently adopted. One reason for this is that integrated management systems are streamlined; so overlapping areas can be audited concurrently.
Integrated Auditing
Integrated auditing is when a single auditee assesses and reviews two or more management systems that have been implemented simultaneously. This can save your business time and money, while also giving you a holistic appraisal of compliance across all operations.
By completing an integrated audit, organisations can experience the following benefits:
- Reduced certification costs;
- Fewer audit interruptions, which can improve efficiencies;
- Streamlined processes;
- Reduced documentation;
- The development of consistent objectives organisation-wide;
- Improved understanding of the relationship between processes, so your systems can be assessed and improved as a whole.
For more information about integrated management systems, or to speak with an experienced consultant, get in touch with our expert team at Integrated Compliance Solutions. Enquire today to find out if you qualify for our free, no-obligation 1-hour system appraisal and quote, and learn how you can benefit from improved compliance.