Is ISO Certification worth it? might be one of those million dollar questions but in reality it’s more of a “work in, work out” answer.
ISO Certification is either a pass or fail situation, there is no gold, silver or bronze ranking but there should be. With ISO Certification there is an acceptable bar that you need to cross to be compliant with the requirements but some organisations will either just tip over the line and others will exceed the line.
In our opinion, if you just tip over the line you will gain some benefits from having ISO Certification but if you go that extra mile and do more than the minimum then you will likely get a lot more benefit from the system.
The benefits that are gained will vary greatly on the ISO Standard that you implement and as mentioned above, the amount of effort you put into improving the management system.
ISO Certification Cost Benefits
Some of the benefits are not as obvious as they can be harder to quantify. For example, when implementing ISO 9001 we would be looking at your processes and identifying streamlining opportunities, often reducing time and paperwork. Unless you are doing time and motion studies then it will be hard to ascertain the cost benefits from these improvements. You could take a guess at how much time and money you have saved and see the value from that perspective.
The more focus you place on process improvements the more benefit you will gain, the ISO 9001 standard is all about continual improvement.
The ISO 14001 Standard on the other hand could be easier to justify from a money perspective as you will need to monitor your waste and utilities usages. It is very easy to save money from utilities and also waste with the Environmental standard. It is not uncommon for businesses to save at least 10% year on year through improvements and just focusing on those areas such as energy reductions.
The ISO 45001 Standard is possibly harder to demonstrate cost benefits but there are some businesses that will see this more than others, especially when you analyse time off work through sickness or accidents. If you reduce the accidents or sickness and improve the wellbeing of personnel then this will return monetary savings.
ISO Business Improvements
This is one of the areas where you can get great benefits from having a management system in place. As mentioned above, ISO 9001 looks more at your processes and will work wonders for your organisation. Benefits such as finding records quickly, reducing process steps, reducing complaints and issues, improving product and service quality will be gained rather quickly once implemented.
The more you look for improvements the more you will benefit from the system, Work In, Work Out remember!
ISO 14001 will give you comfort in the knowledge that you are legally compliant and less likely to have an environmental incident that can cause fines on your business. The same thing goes for ISO 45001 with regards to Health and Safety Legislation.
This is just a small sample of benefits to having an ISO Certification, you can read more on our ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 pages.
In answer to the original question, we believe it is worth having an ISO Certification but the more effort you put in, the more you will see it is worth it. There are some ways to save on your ISO Certification, you can read more about them in our “How to save on your ISO Certification” post.
If you have any specific questions you can drop us a message.
