More About How To Carry Out Your Iso Context Analysis

Continuing from last month, although not specifically required, objective evidence could be a list or matrix of the interested parties, their corresponding needs and expectations, and indication of which of these have been accepted as compliance obligations. Compliance obligations might include:

• All relevant legal requirements;
• All requirements imposed by upper levels in the organisation (for example corporate requirements);
• All relevant requirements of relevant interested parties that the organisation decides to comply with, whether contractually (customers) or voluntarily (environmental or safety commitments).

Communicating with stakeholders, particularly in relation to compliance obligations or legal requirements, is vital. Communication with stakeholders should be based on performance data generated by your organisation’s management system, which will require robust monitoring and measurement to ensure that the data is reliable.

You should ensure that the monitoring and measurement processes are included in the internal audit programme so your organisation can assure itself that checking processes are validated and that the data it is communicating is accurate. 

Internal stakeholders could include:

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​External stakeholders could include:

The relevant requirements of interested parties should be available as inputs into the management system planning process, as potential risks and opportunities, and the following types of documentation would be helpful with this:

• Minutes of meetings (from meetings from each group or interested party);
• Requirement spreadsheets and databases (CRM-type applications);
• External communications and documentation;
• Management system manual;
• Flow down and capture of requirements relevant to the management system defined in contracts, orders, statements of work, terms of business etc;
• Records of meetings where interested parties and their requirements are routinely discussed and monitored;
• Stakeholder mapping to determine importance;
• Records of surveys, networking, face-to-face meetings, association membership, attending conferences, lobbying, participation in benchmarking, etc.

Look for evidence that your organisation has undergone a process to initially identify these groups, and then to identify any of their requirements that are relevant to your organisation’s management system. You should also determine whether these groups’ requirements are reviewed and updated as changes in their requirements occur, or when changes to your organisation’s management system are planned.

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