ABSTRACT
Personnel performing specific assigned tasks shall be qualified on the basis of appropriate education, training, and/or experience, as required. The finest and best documented management system in the world is only as good as the level of an organization’s employee training, awareness, and competence and vice versa. An excellent management system takes an excellent documented program and excellent employees to put everything into place and activate it. The internal communication requirements can be used by management to discuss the corrective actions stemming from the audit and, thereby, increase awareness and competence. In contrast to International Standardization Organization (ISO) 9001, the ISO 14001 Environmental Management Standards have much more stringent requirements. Executive and management personnel, for instance, may have training which provides them with an overview of the environmental and/or quality systems — training which will help them to make decisions and determine the effectiveness of the system(s).
