Challenges in ISO 14001 Certification and How to Overcome Them

Summary:

This article elaborates the key challenges that organizations face while achieving the ISO 14001 certification along with some ways to overcome them.

Environmental impact management is undeniably a key concern for every business today because of the rapidly rising pollution scale, exhaustion of natural resources, depleting quality of water and soil, and global warming. The ISO 14001 certification brought hope for the world. It is the globally recognized standard designed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to help organizations adopt the best practices for environmental management. The standard provides the requirements for formulating and establishing an Environmental Management System (EMS) for organizations. A regulatory EMS helps them to assess the various environmental impacts of their business daily and control them or avoid them with appropriate measures.

While there are assured and immediate benefits of implementing an ISO 14001 certified EMS, there are many challenges in making it fully effective for your business. Here are some of the most common hurdles that you may face while implementing it as well as wise strategies for overcoming these challenges.

Highly Time-Consuming

Businesses already have to comply with the statutory environmental laws or their industry-specific regulations. In such a scenario, meeting environmental regulations of the ISO 14001 standard can be an excess burden for the businesses. ISO 14001 needs them to go beyond that. Being an international standard, it specifies widespread requirements and so incorporating them into their EMS can be a time-consuming process.

The best way to overcome this challenge is to appoint ISO 14001 certification consultants who can guide you in formulating your EMS complying with the minimal necessary environmental laws and ISO regulations. They will review and do a gap analysis of your EMS to accurately find the noncompliance issues in your EMS. They then recommend a plan of actions to make improvements in the EMS and close the gaps, saving your time. In other words, consultation with specialized personnel guide you in the right direction to achieve compliance, without requiring you to go through ISO manuals and training to understand all the vast requirements of the standard.

Comprehensive and Complex Scope

Not only are requirements of ISO 14001 vast but they are comprehensive too! They cover every aspect of a business that has or probably can have an impact on the environment. Starting from material purchases, production, packaging and distribution to consumption of the products/services, ISO 14001 targets to control environmental impacts of your processes as well as products/services. It is mostly overwhelming to consider all these aspects as it makes the scope of the EMS complex.

To overcome this challenge, start with a methodical approach for your EMS implementation. Assess all the impacts of your business, prioritize some according to the severity of their impacts, and target resolving them first with your EMS. While this may take a long time to complete the scope of EMS, if your organization is big with multitude processes, such a staged approach is useful.

Resistance of Employees

Resistance of employees is just one of the major management difficulties that every organization faces while initiating any change of management in their processes. Employees generally get frustrated because they think they have to bear an extra load of tasks apart from their everyday processes for environmental compliance.

To counteract their joint resistance, you need to conduct interactive training sessions and make them aware of the purpose and benefits of an ISO 14001 certified EMS for the organization. Help them realize the personal and social benefits that are available through it such as reduced wastes and health risks, promotion of cleaner environment, sustainability of resources for future generations, and so forth. When workers understand that the advantages of a comprehensive EMS overweigh the responsibilities for operating the EMS, they will be more ready for it.

Costly Implementation

Implementing EMS can be a costly and time-consuming affair. You not only require time but also require personnel training, policymakers, consultation, planning, different tools, and resources to implement the EMS. However, you should do a cost-benefit analysis of the EMS implementation. The costs saved due to reduction of wastes, less use of resources, prevention of environmental hazards, and noncompliance fees will generally outweigh the costs for the EMS implementation. Moreover, implementation is a one-time process and after that you only need to review and improve the EMS, whereas the benefits of the EMS are assured consistently in the long run.

While implementing great strategies in businesses, you will inevitably come across some challenges. The ISO 14001 certification is no exception to the fact. It is one of the fundamental objectives of businesses today because environmental consequences have become intense and highly damaging to the future generation. It is hence highly worthwhile to implement the ISO 14001 environmental management system, despite all the challenges.

Author Bio:

Damon Anderson is the owner of a distinguished ISO certification agency that works to get businesses certified with crucial management certifications like ISO 9001, ISO 27001, ISO 45001, ISO 14001 certification, and many more. He is also the author of several blogs and mainly writes about the benefits, processes, difficulties, and costs of different ISO certifications.

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