Policy: establishing and communicating the quality policy – Lecture 4

Lecture summary:

• The quality policy is a document where you should state your commitment to your improvement
• You need to apply it throughout the organization and make the quality policy is available to any relevant interested parties
• You should keep it simple and keep it relevant to your company

 

A quality policy is a document that provides guidelines, intentions, and goals of your company referring to quality intentions. When creating one, you will describe your company’s strategy and policies that will serve various interested parties. Make it to be a more practical and useful document rather than just a documented statement. Include the strategy for continual improvement. And its top management's responsibility to involve interested parties through the exchange of information. Plus, it's their commitment to distribute the quality policy and communicate it within the organization.

Always remember—you must provide the employees with conditions in which they will feel committed to achieving the objectives of the organization.

Here is a hint for you on how to structure or plan your Quality Policy. First, write the details of the organization, and then details of people who wrote it and who approved it. Describe the purpose of your company and the framework of your Quality Management System. Include which departments, facilities, branches, or affiliates in the QMS applies. Plus, do not forget the organizational structure.

 

Establishing quality policy

By establishing quality policy an ISO 9001 standard wants to say, besides creating it and maintaining it, that you have to write in such a way to match with the purpose of your company’s nature. Ensure to show the company's commitment, such as meeting applicable requirements like customer or regulatory requirements.

 

Communicating the quality policy

You have to make sure to promote quality policy throughout the company. All the employees should be aware of the Quality Policy and are required to work according to this policy. And there are many ways of doing this. First, all employees must understand the importance and impact of the quality policy on the work they do. Of course, it has to be reviewed from time to time by top management.  Changes that require quality policy reviews are things like changes in management, ownership, relocation, products, etc.

 

Quality Policy Example

Here is how one sample of quality policy sounds like: “We practice continual Improvement to achieve customer delight by providing Customer-Centric, Cost-effective, Timely and Qualitative software solutions.”

Keep in mind that sometimes auditors like to like to test if employees are aware of it and if they understand it; so internal communication of the quality policy statement is vital for ISO certification and is understood within your company.

Do not underestimate this part while doing the internal audit.

 

 

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