Blackmores ISO Consultancy Service: The creators of isology®

ISO consultancy isn’t a field many aspire to enter, mostly because many don’t know it exists until you’re tasked with either managing an existing ISO Management System or implementing a brand new one.

We’re continuing with our latest mini-series where we introduce members of our team, to explore how they fell into the world of ISO and discuss the common challenges they face while helping clients achieve ISO certification.  

In this episode we introduce Sarah Ball, a Senior Isologist® at Blackmores, to learn about her journey towards becoming an ISO Consultant and what drives her to help clients on their ISO journey.  

You’ll learn

• What is Sarah’s role at Blackmores?
• What does Sarah enjoy outside of consultancy?
• What path did Sarah take to become an ISO Consultant?
• What is the biggest challenge she’s faced when implementing ISO Standards?
• What is Sarah’s biggest achievement?

Resources

• Isologyhub
• Productivity Ninja

In this episode, we talk about:

[00:30] Episode Summary – We introduce Sarah Ball, a Senior Isologist® here at Blackmores, to discuss her journey towards becoming an ISO consultant who specialises in ISO 9001, ISO 45001, ISO 14001 and ISO 27001.

[03:45] What is Sarah’s role at Blackmores? Sarah is a Senior Isologist® with Blackmores, supporting companies with maintaining systems, undertaking internal audits, and supporting with implementing new systems to gain certification utilising our Isology methodology.

Sarah also coordinates the development of content of our online learning platform, the isologyhub.

[04:50] What does Sarah enjoy doing outside of consultancy?: Sarah has a keen interest in history, having studied it at school, she like to travel to various locations of historical interest.

She also spends a lot of time researching her own family tree, learning as much as she can about the far reaching members of the past.

Sarah also likes to go jogging outside, as the gym environment didn’t inspire much enjoyment, she instead prefers to be in nature while exercising. She has also participated in long distance running for charity, completing the 10k Race for Life. She’s taking on the more daunting muddy 5K version this year, which includes a number of obstacles, so we’re wishing her luck!

One of the new hobbies she’s like to take up this year include mountain climbing, with Mount Snowdon on her to-do list.

[06:35] What was Sarah’s path towards becoming an ISO Consultant?: Sarah initially started in Customer Services, working as a customer service advisor in a company and then got promoted to manager of a team. At that point, her role became more about understanding why they were getting certain complaints and what could be done to prevent them happening rather than just resolving them.

She ended up spending more time with suppliers and other departments to help prevent some of the recurring issues, and along the line it lead onto being asked to implement an ISO 9001 Quality Management System.

Which was a tall request considering the fact that at the time, Sarah knew nothing about ISO 9001 outside of it’s designation and area of focus. As a result, she spent a lot of time researching it, and had the help of an external consultant to Implement the Management System. This was necessary, as knowing how to apply it to a business was something that she needed support with.

2 years later, the company asked Sarah to implement an ISO 45001 Health & Safety management system and an ISO 14001 environmental management system. These two she implemented herself after getting a feel for it during the initial quality management system implementation.

For the next 10 years, Sarah worked in other companies, assisting with their integrated management systems. Along the way, she also picked up on ISO 27001 Information Security, before landing in Blackmores in 2020.

[09:10] A path people fall onto – Most people don’t actively plan to get into ISO consultancy, it’s usually a result of being tasked with managing or implementing a management system while working in another role.

 [10:10] What is Sarah’s favourite aspect of being a Consultant? – Sarah enjoys the variety, not just in the work and tasks but in the companies and industries that she gets to work with.

Each have their own way of working, unique approaches and knowledge nuggets in the form of ways of working that can be cherry picked and applied elsewhere.

She also likes to see how a management system develops and evolves overtime and how it can become part of a company’s success, driving continual improvement.

Sarah enjoys working with people that can see the real benefits of ISO management systems, rather than just focusing on the certificate on the wall.

[13:40] Making a Management System your own – Sarah is a big proponent of making a Management system your own, giving it an identity so that it can be fully integrated into the way a business works.

Businesses do it all the time, usually by naming large projects that everyone can reference by a common shorthand. A Management System can work in the same way, making it a part of the day-to-day running of the business.

She’s also a fan of not worrying about the terminology in Standards. Many of the terms used are meant to be general, this was due to the way international audiences referred to certain aspects of management, it wouldn’t always translate correctly. So many Standards have some admittedly awkward terminology that can be applied to any business, and you by no means have to use their wording, as long as you can explain what relates to what in an audit then you’re free to name things as appropriate to you.  

[16:55] What Standards does Sarah specilaise in and why? Starting with:

• ISO 9001 Quality: This is the main standard that Sarah starting working with, and is one that touches on a lot of areas within other Standards. It’s a great base to build off of, and is the starting point for many venturing into the world of ISO.
• ISO 14001 Environmental: Sarah got experience with this Standard at her first company, it’s also commonly implemented alongside ISO 9001.  
• ISO 45001 Health & Safety: Another one of the first Standards Sarah implemented, it’s also a common one to see in integrated management systems.  
• ISO 27001 Information Security: Sarah got to grips with this Standard through years of working with other companies.

Sarah’s favourite Standard is ISO 9001, not only because it was her first experience with implementing ISO Standards, but because it create a blueprint for success.

ISO Standards are setting the minimum requirement, not the maximum, they are designed get you started so you can make continual improvements. It also acts as a foundation to build onto, you can pick aspects of other Standards to integrate into your existing system. You don’t necessarily have to certify to those additional Standards, but nothing is stopping you from strengthening your Management System with the best bits from other ISO’s.

[21:00] Sarah’s favourite clause in ISO 9001: Sarah personally favors Clause 10 – non-conformity and corrective action. The reason behind that choice is due to that clauses’ importance in driving continual improvement. It’s about taking something negative being turned into a positive, which is what Quality Management is at it’s core.

[22:05] What is the biggest challenge Sarah had faced during a project and how did he overcome it?: Molding the Standard to the business. As a consultant, the biggest challenge is understanding how to make the requirements of a Standard fit the business, and not the other way round.

It’s all about trying to align the ISO Standard requirements to their values and mission, and then getting people on board with understanding the true benefits of management system implementation.

At Blackmores, we ensure that each management system is unique to each business. We don’t operate with a copy paste model. This is another reason why Sarah encourages naming your management system, by branding it you encourage engagement.

Sarah highlights the fact that we run a lot of workshops in the initial part of a project, conducting a Gap Analysis, SWOT and PESTLE ect, this helps our consultants to really get a feel for how a business ticks. From that, we can help steer the delivery of the Management System to the wider business, by building it into their existing tools, such as an intranet.

[25:45] Leading by example: We revamped our own ISO 9001 Management System a few years ago, with both Rachel Churchman and Sarah Ball leading the refresh. We gave it a name, H20 (How 2 Operate) and integrated it with our Microsoft Teams channels as we’d all swapped to mostly remote work following the COVID pandemic in 2020.

As Sarah points out, there are many different ways to display and deliver your management system, including:

• Microsoft Teams
• Intranet
• Google / Google Drive
• SharePoint
• CRM’s such as Monday.com

The key is building it into the day-to-day tools everyone uses. Make the Management System part of your processes, so adhering and maintaining it becomes part of everyone’s way of working.

[28:55] What is Sarah’s proudest achievement? Obtaining her degree through the Open University while still working full time.

It took Sarah 8 years of hard work to obtain her honours degree in History, which was one not required by her work or career development. It was simply something she wanted to do to prove to herself that she could achieve it.

Many other members of Blackmores can attest to Sarah’s level of determination, and organisation, as she shares many tips and techniques learned from her years of study and work. This includes:

The Productivity Ninja – Learned from Graham Allcott’s book, which seeks to help reduce procrastination, and tackle tasks with efficiency.

The Second Brain – A tool to help keep track of ideas / tasks that aren’t an immediate priority.

These tools are now used by a number of the team, and we have no doubt Sarah will be schooling us on more techniques in future.

If you’d like any assistance with implementing ISO standards, get in touch with us, we’d be happy to help!

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