What ISO 9001 really mean?

In September 2023, we received the ISO 9001 certification.

In a nutshell, having ISO 9001 means that a company has a well-structured interior. By interior, we mean what happens within – like sales, order fulfillment, recruitment. Every area has a repeatable path it follows. Professionally, these paths are called processes, which are further broken down into smaller segments – procedures and instructions.

With well-structured processes, we can achieve the following outcomes:

a) clients are served in a consistent manner,

b) repeatable problems are solved in a consistent way,

c) every employed individual knows their scope of duties and where to check how to perform them. And they perform them independently. (and if not, we have a clear signal that either the process or the employee needs improvement).

If you spend most of your day answering phones with repeatable, simple questions, and every emergency situation lands on your desk – it’s a clear sign that it’s worth looking at the processes in your company.

This situation may also apply to your managers – often they may think that engaging in micro-management all day is normal – it’s not – and so they don’t even let you know that a problem exists.

No need to cite any scientific studies here – just ask yourself or your managers:

– How many times a day do you answer the same questions?

– How often are you pulled away from your tasks due to urgent calls, which don’t really address highly complicated issues?

Working on processes, procedures, and instructions in your company will allow:

-> minimizing the number of critical situations, or in industry jargon, reducing the number of ‘fuck-ups’,

-> freeing up your time and your managers’ time for handling significant matters that bring real profits to the company,

-> increasing the quality of service to your clients.

These 3 points will significantly impact the efficiency of your company (more serviced orders with the same resources).

I am satisfied that in the case of BWS, passing the ISO audit was a formality.

At the beginning of 2022, we underwent a significant restructuring, which included creating procedures and implementing them. We also set the direction we are heading, and what followed – we replaced the entire managerial staff.

Managers at BWS don’t waste time on small management and inventing new solutions to old problems.

The result of having, applying, and improving processes, procedures, and instructions in our company includes:

– only 0.77% absence of personnel on jobs – for a crewing company, it means that for every 100 people on implementation, we need less than 1 person in reserve. So, the attendance is almost flawless, absences are traceable.

– specialisation -> by the end of October 2023 alone, our technical department conducted 64 technical trainings, thanks to which we now have 160 individuals with confirmed qualifications in our team.

– more than half of our clients from 2022 increased their demand for our crew in 2023 (and the year isn’t over yet!).

-> check our article about the trainings here 👉 bws.net.pl/en/how-do-we-train-our-crew/

Without procedures, we would still be answering phones from the crew asking “when’s the job?” and from clients asking “what are your rates?”. Crew doesn’t call because they know that new jobs appear in our system. Clients place orders through our app or via email, knowing all the terms upfront for the entire year.

Say “check mate”! Book our crew and see how fast, organised and structured we are!

And if you’d like to discuss processes noncommittally – I’d be happy to talk about it and share more of my experiences.