Reflecting a greater focus on achieving organizational success through people, the first certification program for ISO 10018, “Quality management—Guidelines on people involvement and competence” is now available for organizations committed to quality people management. This standard was created in 2012 by ISO/TC 176—the same technical committee that created the ISO 9001 quality process management standard—to ensure that people have the engagement, capability, and involvement to contribute to sustainable success.
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The ISO 10018 standard and certification provides a formal approach to ensure that the entire organization has a common vision and values, and that leadership, assessment, communications, innovation, rewards and recognition, and other key activities are aligned to foster continuous improvement and customer engagement.
Conference: “ISO 10018: Enterprise Engagement in Action |
“ISO 10018 is to people management what ISO 9001 is to process management,” explains Ron McKinley, co-founder of the International Center for Enterprise Engagement (ICEE). “Because ISO 9001 considers people competency and involvement critical to sustainable success, ISO 10018 is almost a must for ISO 9001-compliant companies. But the process and designation offer benefits to any organization seeking to maximize performance through people by providing a framework and system for creating a sustainable customer-oriented, innovative culture continuously focused on improvement, satisfaction, and results. For most organizations, this is an ad hoc process at best.”
Bruce Bolger, co-founder of ICEE, believes that the quality management field is ideally suited to help break down the silos that stand in the way of organizational engagement because “quality professionals and consultants are already accustomed to interfacing with different parts of the organization,” he notes. “ISO 10018 creates exciting opportunities for these professionals and the consultants who serve them to create new value for their organizations by better addressing the often-overlooked people component of continuous improvement. ISO 10018 standards and certification also create a new business opportunity for ISO 9001 quality management consultants.”
The ISO 10018 certification is administered by ICEE at the Healthcare Management Institute of the University of Texas Medical Branch. The goal is to help organizations apply a formal approach to foster the proactive involvement of everyone—from customers and distribution partners to employees, vendors, and communities—to achieve organizational success and to deliver on their marketing promises.
Like ISO 9001, the ISO 10018 certification stands for a formal commitment to quality people management that certified companies will be able to use in their sales, marketing, and talent recruitment.
McKinley says that the state of quality people management today is like that of quality process management during the 1980s, when there were no standards for quality processes. “Twenty years later, with about 1.3 million ISO 9001-certified organizations in place, those who oversee the worldwide-respected ISO 9000 family of quality standards recognized that the creators had overlooked a critical component of quality process management: the role of people management. We hope that in 30 years many organizations will proudly display the ISO 10018 designation for quality people management in their marketing as many do for ISO 9001 today.”
Adds Bolger, “Despite investing hundreds of billions each year in branding, engagement surveys, motivational speakers, leadership training, communications, surveys, rewards and recognition, and countless books and social media aphorisms on leadership, neither customer nor employee engagement have budged in years, according to surveys by Gallup and the American Customer Service Institute. By bringing a formal process to engaging people, ISO 10018 has the potential to do for quality people management what ISO 9001 has accomplished for process management.”
For more information or to register to “ISO 10018: Enterprise Engagement in Action,” visit ICEE and select the “Quality Digest Subscriber” option. Or contact Bruce Bolger at bolger@TheEEA.org or (914) 262–2322 for more information about ISO 10018. To get a 50-percent discount, be sure to use promo code QD.
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