Understanding ISO Clause 5.1: The Value of Leadership & Commitment 

Most organisations invest in management systems with business growth and development goals in mind. This is because the frameworks outlined in ISO Management System Standards are designed to improve the overall performance of your organisation, and establish a foundation for future improvements.

But the process approach for continuous improvements that’s essential for achieving Certification to ISO Standards is reliant on full transparency and cooperation. After all, ISO Management Systems are designed to facilitate holistic workflows and processes. You can’t make changes to one component without affecting others.

That’s ultimately why leadership and commitment are quintessential to establishing, implementing and maintaining ISO Management Systems. Effective leadership is the driver for positive change in any organisation, including in the implementation and monitoring of an ISO Management System Standard.

The value of leadership and commitment is represented across all four of the core ISO Management System Standards today, specifically in “Clause 5.1 Leadership and commitment”. So whether you’re implementing ISO 9001:2015 – Quality Management System (QMS) or ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management System (EMS), you will need top management support and involvement to ensure your Management System aligns with overarching business goals. 

Today, we’ll be taking a closer look at ISO Clause 5.1, outlining the leadership and commitment required by top management for the successful and sustainable implementation of the main ISO Management Systems.

Key Responsibilities for Leaders Outlined in ISO Clause 5.1

As changes to policies or processes relating to Management Systems can have trickle-down effects across your organisation, input from top management is essential for ensuring your ISO Management Systems are implemented in full accordance with business goals. To ensure ISO conformance for Certification Readiness and commitment to the Ongoing requirements for your organisation, there are key responsibilities that your business leaders simply cannot afford to delegate at risk of costly miscommunications and inconsistencies down the line.

Clause 5.1 outlines key responsibilities that must be met and maintained by top management to support the effective and efficient implementation and maintenance of Management Systems.

Leading the implementation and monitoring of Management Systems

As per Clause 5.1, top management are required to take accountability for the effectiveness of an ISO Management System. This means that whilst implementation of Management Systems is a collective responsibility, it’s up to top managers to ensure the efficacy and performance of that system.

Here are the expectations for top management in upholding these responsibilities, as outlined in Clause 5.1 Leadership and commitment (across the Quality, WHS, Environmental and Information Security ISO Standards):

Defining organisational roles, responsibilities, and authorities

Top managers are also tasked with approving key documentation (i.e. policies, company/staff profiles, risk assessments and mitigation plans, workflow outlines, etc.) for Certification to the main relevant ISO Management System Standards. 

Why do organisational hierarchies need to be well-defined to support your Management Systems? Because in much the same way that top management are responsible for giving the green light on proposed process improvements, department heads are vital to identifying and sharing these improvement opportunities within and surrounding their team operations. 

This is why top management are also responsible for supporting and empowering other managers as per Clause 5.1. Organisations where team members feel confident in voicing concerns to top managers are far more likely to absorb results from performance evaluations. This means they’ll also be better positioned to adapt processes accordingly and in alignment with staff insights. As staff use these processes every single day, their insights will be invaluable when it comes to developing process improvements.

Standard-specific leadership responsibilities across all 4 core standards

As mentioned, the 5.1 Leadership and commitment clause is across the main four ISO Management System standards. However, while the general principle of leadership and commitment remains the same, the specific focus varies depending on the standard’s intent. Here’s a summary of the different focus areas of each of the 4 core ISO Management System standards for the 5.1 Leadership clause:

Who is Defined as “Top Management” Under ISO Clause 5.1?

According to the ISO Organisation, the term “top management” refers to the person or group of persons who leads and controls your organisation at the highest level. These are the key decision makers in your organisation – think CEOs, branch managers, managing directors, executives, and department heads.

As these figures are at the top of your organisational hierarchy, they’re in the strongest position to effectively monitor and evaluate the performance and impacts of a Management System. With all the necessary documentation compiled in preparation for your Certification Audit, business leaders should have access to all the resources required to monitor ISO Management Systems from a top-down perspective.

This perspective is key to ensuring your organisation can develop targeted, well-informed process improvements. In a nutshell, effective top leader engagement means improved system performance monitoring, which ultimately leads to stronger growth strategising for your organisation.

Why Responsibilities in Clause 5.1 Cannot be Delegated

Business processes are dynamic by nature in that they are used across various departments and disciplines. This innate segmentation of workflows is part of the reason why so many organisations struggle with managing change.

One of the many things that great leaders do, however, is they stay engaged as they empower rather than delegate their own responsibilities to their team. In organisations where top managers stay present, accounting for changes in policy or workflow processes isn’t blindly navigated by team members based on extrapolations of management preferences.

In healthy organisations that are fully conforming to their chosen ISO Management System Standards, these responsibilities of top management as outlined in Clause 5.1 are maintained by business leaders to ensure that high-profile decision-making stays aligned with business development goals.

Case Study: Admin & Clause 5.1 Leadership and Commitment

Our Consultants have worked with top management across a wide range of industries, and time and time again, we’ve seen top managers delegating Management Systems projects to administrators. Admin staff do the best that they can with the information they’ve been provided, but as they don’t have clearance access to holistic operational performance data for their organisations, or the autonomy to approve major documents and processes, our consultants commonly see the wrong decisions being made.

These delays resulted in top management stepping in further down the line and making wide-scale reactive changes, which in turn caused delay in the Certification process, in addition to waste of time and resources with rework.

Another common outcome of outsourcing top management responsibilities to team members is seeing organisations conduct research (i.e. market research, risk assessments, etc.) to communicate the value of Business Management Systems to business leaders and primary decision-makers. In these cases, it’s common for the insights derived from this research to be shared with top leaders without touching on the learning curve needed to really engage with and understand the dynamic benefits of implementing those systems.

Cases where the responsibilities of top leaders were also delegated saw more instances of business decision-makers maintaining unrealistic expectations for the Certification Process. In fact, the process of securing Certification to ISO Standards is a whole business improvement project, not just a few documents to meet requirements.

Conduct Effective and Efficient Management Reviews for your Organisation

Meeting ISO requirements in full is simply not possible without commitment from leadership. Input from top management and collaboration from department heads is essential to ensuring cohesive processes across your ISO Management System. Alongside offering guided support for top management to ensure your organisation reaches Certification Readiness, our Consultants also offer ongoing support for organisations in maintaining their Management System and Certification.

Our consulting services against the ISO Standards are designed to provide tailored insights into how you can optimise management review processes for your organisation. Call our Consultants on 1300 614 007 or book your FREE Strategy Session online for expert guidance on the topic surrounding ‘ISO clause 5.1 leadership and commitment’ and how you can secure top management involvement across not only process development but ongoing improvement actions for your organisation.