Building a management system is way more scientific than people give it credit for, so it's no surprise that we start with a definition and understanding of context.

Clause 4 is the foundation of every ISO management system standard, ISO 9001, 14001, 45001, and 27001 all start with understanding the organization and its context, but paradoxically, it's often the most overlooked.

It breaks down into two steps:

1.Identify the internal and external issues that affect your ability to achieve intended results. It's literally like describing your activity and what can affect it.

2.Identify and understand the needs and expectations of your interested parties. By interested parties, we mean those who can affect, or be affected by, your management system (customers, employees, suppliers, regulators, shareholders...). Of course, they don't all matter at the same level, which is why you need to determine which of their expectations become actual requirements for your system.

Together, these two clauses feed directly into determining the scope of the management system: what's in, what's out, and why.

The standard doesn't ask for a specific method, SWOT and PESTLE are the most commonly used tools for context analysis, but they are not requirements. What the standard does ask for is evidence that this thinking actually happened, and that it's revisited when the context changes.

And we'll see that all these standards are designed the same way, not to impose, but to guide.

#ISO9001#ISO14001#ISO45001#ISO27001 #ContextOfTheOrganization #SWOT #PESTLE #QHSE #RiskBasedThinking