How to remain ISO 9001 and 17025 compliant in this remote working environment

The pandemic has forced a lot of companies to adopt remote work. While some places are opening back up for in-office work some companies continue to promote remote work to ensure maximum safety of their staff. However, this new remote working environment should not hamper your ISO certification. Whether you’re a calibration laboratory with an ISO 17025 or another business with an ISO 9001, losing your credential is the last thing you’d want from the pandemic. Hence, it’s important to put in place the right measures that ensure a similar level of work quality as that in-person or in-office. Here are a few tips from ISO 17025 and ISO 9001 consulting services that will help you ensure constant compliance to ISO standards and hence ensure continued high levels of service delivery to your clients.

How to remain ISO 9001 and 17025 compliant in this remote working environment

Infrastructure:

The biggest change in this remote work environment is infrastructure. From in-house office networks to a now spread-out server usage, the company’s IT infrastructure needs multiple changes to stay ISO compliant. The first in this is investing in an Information Security Management System (ISMS). While you may or may not need a full ISMS system depending on your nature of operations you should look at some IT infrastructure risks to maintain high standards of operations. ISO 9001 and ISO 17025 Consultant also suggest that a VPN would be another great thing to have to ensure that your employees can connect to a safe network while handling business data of any sort.

Efficient working environment:

As stated in ISO 9001, a suitable work environment including both physical and human factors is crucial to maintain high work quality standards. Just like infrastructure, this has to undergo changes when with workers now working remotely. While you may not be able to control the physical environment of your employee’s home or office space, you can definitely educate them about setting up a safe and ergonomic workspace at home. Similarly, you can also continue to encourage your employees to engage in conversation with other employees in the organization while working remotely too. Other human factors are also key to employee performance and ensuring that you continue to give them an ideal work environment. Programs to help employees deal with work stress, burnout, and other emotions are necessary to give them a safe and supported working environment even while they work away from the office.

Communication:

Just like infrastructure, communication styles and systems are bound to change within and outside the organization too. However, with a little bit of ISO 9001 and ISO 17025 help, you can easily set up a communications channel that helps you get through this remote working environment easily. One example of a communication setup would be investing in software that facilitates remote communications. Further, you can utilize ISO 9001 documentation services and train people to get accustomed to this new system of communication. Establishing routine call alignments, proper worker-to-worker, and manager-to-worker channels are necessary to ensure communication lapses.

These few pointers can help you set up an ideal remote working structure that helps you remain compliant with the ISO standards. If you are looking for more inputs on this, get in touch with the experts at Cal Lab Access.

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