The issue of ‘access’ and ‘accessibility’ comes up in a number of the ISO Management Standards, and within a series of audit tools.

The term ‘accessibility’ has a number of different meanings / applications, but the most pertinent relate to:

  • The characteristic of being able to be reached or obtained easily.
  • The quality of being easy to understand.[1]

How does this apply to management systems? Not only do operational personnel need to know where to find or how to log into Management System Policy, Procedures and documents, but the intent, meaning and information within these Procedures and documents needs to be easy to obtain, and (then leading to the second meaning) it needs to be easy to be understand.

Definitions aside, the requirement for having access to systems and processes feeds into the application of the management system requirements, with the access provided in a manner that makes it simple and straight-forward, almost fool-proof to comply with.

All too often we are seeing Management Systems that prompt us to question whether all that good quality information is ‘accessible’ (i.e. easy to understand) for the end-user. Posing the next question: what’s the consequence when access isn’t possible, or when documents that aren’t easy to understand? (The obvious answer: People don’t use or follow the required procedure and that’s when incidents occur.)

To promote compliance, the concept of access needs to be underpinned by context (a key issue discussed in earlier sections of the Management Standards), with the context being broad enough to include:

  • The end user and their level of comfort in reading management system requirements,
  • The end user’s understanding associated with managing the specific Quality / WHS/ environmental / etc. process, AND
  • The amount of operational spare time and cognitive capacity they have (during work) to read, understand and then apply the management system requirements.

An important question for organisations to ask is: Are those lengthy word-dense procedures that are all technically correct really the right way to go, if the fundamental principle is to ensure that workers have access to, and comply with the management system requirements?

Please contact QRMC for more information.

[1] This concept of being easy to understand reflects the intent of Sec 39(3) from the WHS Regulation requiring that information, training and instruction is provided in a way that is readily understandable.