What is Management Review? 

A management review is a structured review (it could be a meeting) that takes place at scheduled time frames throughout the year. The goal of a management review is to establish whether your management systems (financial, quality, environmental, food safety, and/or information security) are performing as they were intended to.

These reviews should be formal in nature and be carried out by a member of top management.

The reviews ensure key elements of your management system are reviewed in order to ensure all levels of management are aware of any changes, updates, new policies & activities, or room for improvement.

If your organisation is running a certified ISO management system, it is mandatory that these management reviews are conducted.  A management review will be able to look at the performance of the management system and analyse whether the desired results are being produced.

Benefits of management reviews:

• Ability to show inefficiencies in your management system that otherwise may not have been made apparent
• Ensures your management system is meeting your organisation’s requirements and you are striving toward the desired results
• Involves stepping back from your day-to-day activities and viewing your organisation with a wider lens
• Ensures that your organisation is still focused on its initial goal and is meeting the needs of the customer
• Ability to learn from what has gone wrong, and brainstorm procedures to put in place to mitigate the same mistake happening
• All employees will be on the same page about what tasks have to be carried out, what needs to be avoided, and what could be implemented

Management review best practice: 

In order to get the most out of your management review, you should give your customer a voice in the review and make them an open forum for decision-making. 

Let’s dive into each of these in more detail:

1. Frequency of the Review

It’s no secret that there’s a direct relationship between the usefulness of management reviews and the number of times a year they take place. Three or four times a year is a good start, but monthly or bi-monthly is even better.

Having a timetable will really keep you on your toes. Knowing you have to front up every couple of months and examine the state of your system with other managers is a good motivating factor for keeping it up to date.

There’s no way things can be allowed to slide for long, which is great for the health of the system – and your business in general.

2. Give the customer a voice

In order to get adequate management buy-in, the management reviews need to be customer focused. This will mean metaphorically giving your customers a “seat at the management table”. 

During the reviews, you should always be asking what the impacts of the proposed decisions will be on the customers at hand.

Customers are what your organisation is all about and by ‘including’ them in these reviews; the systems will be updated in ways that have their best interests in mind.

3. Make the management reviews an open forum for discussion and decision making

Your most effective reviews are ones that consist of debate, discussion, and open participation.  This is because changes may actually be made. 

By being scared or reluctant to make your management reviews open for discussion, not many changes or suggestions will come about.