How to make the most out of your next Management Review

22 Feb, 2017

A management review is a meeting to evaluate the management system that you have in place and identify any opportunities for improvement there may be. These would take place at planned intervals, either monthly, quarterly, or annually.

But what should you discuss in the review?

The Previous Review

Minutes from the previous management review should be studied, looking at the actions that were decided. The outstanding actions should be taken into account when reviewing the system and updated.

Current Structure and Resources

Your current company structure and resources should also be reviewed during the meeting. Your company structure will be able to show if you have correctly delegated roles and responsibilities to your staff to maintain the system and have the necessary people in place.

Performance Indicators

Your performance indicators should be tracked to show that you and your company are on course to meet your targets. Examples of Key Performance Indicators that you should review are your customer satisfaction and retention, net promoter score, and your customer acquisition cost.

Audit Results

The results of your latest audit should be evaluated in this meeting so that you can identify any areas that need to be addressed. The audit report would go into detail about the findings of the audit, so this should give you relevant information to base your future actions on.

Feedback

Feedback should be collected from multiple parties to effectively review how successful your management system has been. The feedback from the audit report should be covered as well as feedback from staff members. Feedback from your clients is the most important feedback to review so that you can see how your business is seen from the outside. You can collect this information from regular client satisfaction surveys. However, the most important thing about feedback is that it is understood and actioned!

Analysing Business Risk

Any risks that are facing the company should be analysed to identify and classify how much of a potential threat they pose. The loss of customers or issues with cash flow are examples of such potential risks to your business. Implementing a management system minimises these risks and by using a risk assessment register, you can categorise the risk and use this to show how the risk has been reduced.

Non-Conformances

Things don’t always go to plan and these errors need to be noted as non-conformances. Keeping track of these issues will help you in identifying areas that need to be examined and ensure the non-conformances have been addressed by the next management review.

Improvements & Actions

After looking into the above areas, you can identify any areas for improvement and create an action plan, detailing who in the team is responsible for which areas. In your next management review meeting, you would then cover how these areas have been improved from the previous actions and note any further steps.

Training Plans

Providing staff with appropriate training for your management system can ensure that your system is working to its full potential. This gives your employees the skills to maintain your system so that your company can fully integrate and embrace the standard. Courses are available for numerous systems including ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and ISO 27001, plus others.

To explore this topic more you can watch our quick video on running a management review meeting here.

If you are interested in obtaining an ISO management system, take a look at the standards that we offer here.

If you would like to have a fully-trained member of your workforce to effectively manage your system, you can see the training courses we provide here.

Sources: Quality Systems, ISO Quality Services, ClearPoint Strategy