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TRAIN TO GAIN AND NAVIGATE THE COMPLEX CHALLENGES OF MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
Are you looking to develop your management systems to drive efficiencies and streamline operations across quality, health & safety and environmental? Greg Elwell, QHSE Manager at Bureau Veritas UK & Ireland, explores the role of training in building and maintaining an effective management system.
Management systems offer a host of benefits for any organisation. Whether you’re looking to gain external ISO certification or simply meet internal standards, the development and deployment of an effective management system creates a framework for excellence. It streamlines processes, drives efficiencies, encourages buy-in and - in many cases - can unlock cost savings. But how can you be sure you’re taking the right path to maximise your effort and investment?
I often ask clients: ‘Do you want to be meandering through a management systems minefield? Or would you rather plot a calculated course, avoiding the risks and maximising the opportunities that a considered, structured approach gives you?’ The answer, of course, is always the latter.
The role of training in management systems
Management systems can be complex, particularly for organisations with little or no experience. Apart from anything else, they have their own language – and it’s no easy task to understand and apply that language.
Some organisations will choose to bring in an external consultant to help translate the management system standard and make it easier to follow. But this may leave many questions. Can you be sure that this expert will translate the complex requirements into your natural business language? How much support will they offer? Will they be thinking long-term, or just offer a short-term solution to the immediate requirements?
The alternative approach is to become your own expert. Training in the specifics of management systems can build the competence required to effectively understand, navigate and maximise the efficiencies. It offers a sustainable, long-term solution, investing in your people and supporting long-term growth. The key is to do what you’re best at – the expertise, services and products that brings the clients to you. Management systems provide the insights and framework to do that time after time.
Remember, management systems enable you to effectively:
- Plan – take a step back and look at things in a fresh way, with recognition of the true risks and opportunities available.
- Do – once the structure; processes, procedures, instructions, guides, training and templates are all in place, you can do what you do in potentially a new, better, more consistent way, Enhancing your ability to repeat the right thing and reproduce the right approach is key to achieving your goals, and management system set the framework for that.
- Check – keep an eye on things in a structured way, with the right lens in place to ensure that the view you’re getting is clear. This ensures visibility of the status, efficiency and effectiveness of processes, including what’s been delivered, where it’s gone spectacularly right and you want to repeat it, or what hasn’t gone so well and you want to make sure that path isn’t followed again.
- Act – act on what you’ve seen, what requires changing, updating, modifying, scrapping and then re-plan.
Achieving fluency in the management system language through training – and giving your teams the ability to interpret this into your own business language so they can embed the learnings and improve - can be a virtuous cycle. And Bureau Veritas offers the courses you need to do that.