ISO HR Committee Delays Engagement Standards, ICEE Moves Forward on ISO 10018 Certification
With the ISO employee engagement standards at the beginning of a long process, the EEA’s focus is on ISO 10018 quality people management standards that already exist.
In its annual plenary meeting in Bali in September the ISO Technical Committee 260 – Human Resource Management (TC/260) voted to close the working group for the employee engagement standard first proposed by the Enterprise Engagement Alliance (EEA) and approved by TC/260 earlier this year. At the request of the acting convener of the working group from the United Kingdom during the meeting in Bali, the U.K. was asked by the plenary session to create a proposal for a new ISO employee engagement standard with a revised scope.
- ICEE Forges Ahead on ISO 10018 Certification for Quality People Management
- The First University-Based Professional and Academic Learning Program on Engagement
- A Platform Already in Place
In its annual plenary meeting in Bali in September the ISO Technical Committee 260 – Human Resource Management (TC/260) voted to close the working group for the employee engagement standard first proposed by the Enterprise Engagement Alliance (EEA) and approved by TC/260 earlier this year. At the request of the acting convener of the working group from the United Kingdom during the meeting in Bali, the U.K. was asked by the plenary session to create a proposal for a new ISO employee engagement standard with a revised scope.
Reports Dr. Ron McKinley, Chairman of TC/260, “Those who were present at the working group in Bali, led by the acting convener from the United Kingdom, decided to recommend that the scope be changed, and I was not there nor am I at liberty to report on internal ISO deliberations. A scope change requires a new proposal. Because of Hurricane Harvey, I could not attend the meeting.” McKinley says that he expects the U.K. to create a new proposal for employee engagement standards that will be submitted for a vote later this year or early next year and that one way or another the employee engagement standards process will continue.
ICEE Forges Ahead on ISO 10018 Certification for Quality People Management
While the TC/260 employee engagement standards process proceeds, the EEA, in collaboration with the newly created International Center for Enterprise Engagement at the Healthcare Management Institute of the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), will focus on the launch of the first ever ISO 10018 certification for quality people management and creation of the first university-based professional and academic curriculum on enterprise engagement. Explains Bruce Bolger, “We understand the give and take required to create new standards in a worldwide organization and will remain actively involved. In the meantime, the process of creating this proposal for a new standard lead to the discovery of ISO 10018, which already provides a clear framework for enterprise-wide engagement.” The First University-Based Professional and Academic Learning Program on Engagement
Headed by Dr. Ron McKinley and Lee S. Webster, ICEE will officially launch the ISO 10018 certification at ISO 1001: Enterprise Engagement in Action, an upcoming conference at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Dec. 7-8, on the first ISO 10018 certification for quality people management and on the first professional and academic education program on enterprise engagement. For registration information, go to TheICEE.org. McKinley and Webster are co-founders of the Healthcare Management Institute at UTMB to bring best human resources practices to the healthcare industry and to administer UTMB’s role as Secretariat of TC/260, and Administrator for the U.S. Technical Advisory Group for TC/260. McKinley was most recently Vice President of Human Resources for UTMB, and Webster, was formerly Director of Employee Relations there.
Bolger points out that “Based on the experience of Ron McKinley and Lee Webster in the realm of standards, and McKinley’s role as liaison between TC/260 and ISO Technical Committee 176 (TC/176), the ISO committee that manages ISO 9000, this is the best approach under any circumstances.”
Lee Webster an ICEE co-founder, elaborates. “Without the proposal from the EEA for an engagement standard, I’m not sure when we would have realized that the time is now to create a formal certification for ISO 10018. The creators of ISO 9000 would not have put so much work into this new standard for quality people management if they did not believe it was critical to success, so we are pleased to create the first ISO 10018 certification. And because over 1.3 million companies worldwide already follow ISO 9000, the ISO 10018 certification is the ideal way to go for any company that believes in ISO 9000 and/or a formal people strategy.”
What’s the difference between the ISO 10018 standard and certification and ISO HR 260 employee engagement standard under development? Explains Webster, “Essentially, the ISO 10018 standard already exists as a member of a family of ISO 9000 standards that are followed by over 1.3 million companies worldwide, and provides a clear framework for implementing quality people management practices across the enterprise. The ISO HR employee engagement standard is back at the proposal stage, will take years to create. I am sure they will produce good work but the result is years away.”
A Platform Already in Place
McKinley explains that the ISO 10018 standards largely align with the learning and certification program of the Enterprise Engagement Alliance curriculum program, “so we have a complete learning platform in place and a community of professors, corporate practitioners, and solution providers ready to help that are greatly accelerating this process. It is a win-win and mostly, we believe, for organizations worldwide that believe in the principles of applying formal processes to quality people management.”
McKinley sees potential. “Back in 1987, there was not one company certified in ISO 9000 and who remembers the first one? Today, there are over 1.3 million, with at least 35,000 in the U.S. That happened because first one company and then another became certified in a process that was demonstrated to improve performance and quality over time, and therefore ISO 9000 became a requirement to do business with many companies. We agree with the experts in charge of ISO 9000 that quality people management is as important as process management, so that anyone committed to quality process management will understand the potential value of quality people management in terms of improved results, such as, sales, marketing, recruitment, customer and employee retention, and, most of all, bottom-line results.”
Here are links to additional information about ISO 10018 standards:
