Journey to ISO Consulting

Becoming an ISO consultant isn’t a career path many aspire to, rather it’s one often stumbled on after being tasked with either implementing or maintaining a Standard for a business.

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 Minoo Agarwal, a QHSE Consultant at Blackmores, to learn about her journey of following in her father’s footsteps towards ISO Standards Management, and what drives her to help clients on their ISO journey.  

You’ll learn

·      What is Minoo’s role at Blackmores?

·      What does Minoo enjoy outside of consultancy?

·      What path did Minoo take to become an ISO Consultant?

·      What is the biggest challenge she’s faced when implementing ISO Standards?

·      What is Minoo’s biggest achievement?

Resources

·      Isologyhub

In this episode, we talk about:

[02:05] Episode Summary – We introduce Minoo Agarwal, a QHSE Consultant here at Blackmores, to discuss her journey towards becoming an ISO consultant who specialises in ISO 14001, ISO 9001, ISO 45001 and ISO 27001.   

[03:50] What is Minoo’s role at Blackmores? Minno’s official job title is QHSE Consultant. She is the ISO14001:2015 standard champion and a Mental Health First Aider for Blackmores.

Ultimately, Minoo supports clients with embedding Management System into the heart of their companies. Her work with them typically consists of:

·      Conducting internal audits

·      Management review

·      Consultancy days or document review days

Essentially doing whatever it takes to getting the management system to be at a suitable level to pass external audits.  

[05:05] What does Minoo enjoy doing outside of consultancy?: Minoo’s free time is mostly taken up by her dear son, Aarav.

He’s very young at the moment; and so Minoo makes sure that any of her input into his life is to ensure that he is successful in whatever career he chooses. In addition, Aarav has a very busy social life! So, she’s makes sure her gets plenty of time to play with his friends.

Minoo is also a bit of a foodie, enjoying eating out when possible. She also enjoys reading books by authors such as Jay Shetty and the Sad Guru.

[07:10] What was Minoo’s path towards becoming an ISO Consultant?: Minoo, like many of our consultants, didn’t know that she would become a consultant.

The opportunity was presented by Mel Blackmore via LinkedIn in 2019, on April 1st of all dates!

Minoo’s passion for this field arose from her father, Mr Hardial Agarwal, who is very well known in the industry. He worked as a consultant for Crayola for many years, travelling abroad to meet with various suppliers and international branches of the company. His work always held an air of mystery to Minoo as a child, and she become more curious about his role in later years, even attending CQI meetings with her father to learn more.

She started her career in 2006 as a Quality, Environmental, Health & Safety Administrator and since then really never looked back, progressing from role to role from roles like Quality Associate, to a Business Quality Control Officer, to a QESH Auditor, to HSQE Compliance Manager and then as a Head of Quality. 

Each role gave her a different experience of life. As a result, she has worked in many industries ranging from electronics to logistics to pharma and even automotive and IT.

She feels very fortunate to gain experience and knowledge from a range of industries from her previous roles, and now more so from Blackmores where this knowledge develops further.

[12:35] What is Minoo’s favourite aspect of being a Consultant? – Minoo genuinely loves her role as a consultant at Blackmores, it was hard to narrow down a specific aspect.

That being said, Minoo loves to hear when a client of hers has passed their surveillance and re-certification audits, especially if it was with no findings. It’s a return on their combined effort as a team to get recognition of that fact from a certification body.

She also enjoys the teamwork involved, often being seen as a real member of the client’s team. As a consultant, a bid part of your role is building strong working relationships, which makes the whole process run a lot more smoothly.

She also takes a bit of joy in being able to be a bit bossy, though all the guidance is with the best intentions.

[15:40] What Standards does Minoo specilaise in and why? Starting with:

·      ISO 9001 Quality Management: A core foundation that many businesses start with when diving into the world of ISO Standards. This is an essential one for any ISO consultant and is often the first Implementation experience for many who go on to become ISO consultants.

·      ISO 14001 Environmental Management: Minoo is our Standards champion for this Standard. This involves keeping on-top of any changes to the Standard and creating internal training material for the team.   

·      ISO 45001 Health and Safety Management: A few of Minoo’s previous roles involved health and safety compliance, so she learned a lot about ISO 45001 and general risk management along the way.   

·      ISO 27001 Information Security Management: This one was a necessity to learn when joining Blackmores. Many of our clients have integrated management systems with multiple ISO certifications, most of which include ISO 27001.

Minoo also has some experience with MHRA regulations and TS 16949.

[18:20] What is the biggest challenge Minoo had faced during a project and how did she overcome it?: Minoo stresses that it’s fundamental to fully understand the requirements of the client from the very onset of the project, if that is understood then there will be no challenges during a project.

She provides two incidents in particular that stood out:

Scope creep: There was an incident when there was a misunderstanding of the work agreed, and the client had anticipated much more than what was agreed. As a result, Minoo had to complete the work in her own time to meet their expectations.

Personal bias: There have been incidents not related to projects but external audits when external assessors start to audit the client by providing what they believe their interpretations is of the standard is the only way that it can be implemented. Forgetting the fact that Standards are built to be flexible in the way they are implemented. They can get very fussy about the exact way documentation should be laid out and worded, which is obviously not a specific stipulation within a Standard.

Minoo has overcome this by confronting the assessor at the time and asking them to explain where in the standard it say that – basically keeping them in check.

[21:30] What is Minoo’s proudest achievement?  On the work side, Minoo is always proud to hear when a client has passed their Surveillance and Recertification Audits with no or few findings.

On the personal side, it’s her son who she lovingly dubs as her masterpiece. She’s already instilling the values of health and safety into him, and he’s always looking out for others. She couldn’t be prouder to watch him grow up into his own person.

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