Nonconformance is Not a Dirty Word!

Be open, be transparent and embrace nonconformances.

Nonconformances Are like a Pat on the Back!

I want to share with you an experience I had recently at an audit I was conducting. I was interviewing the workers and it was an absolute pleasure speaking to them.

Why?

We were talking about nonconformances.

Normally people run away from the topic of nonconformances. Not at this business! They were throwing the word nonconformance, NC, NCR around like it was a good thing. Like it was a pat on the back!

One worker even said to me “NCs are the biggest teacher around here”. I lapped this all up as I loved their positive attitude – remember these were the workers; the employees, not the owners of the business.

I often say to my clients that when you identify an issue and it's recorded as a non-conformance, this is actually a good thing. It's a positive thing. Yes, I understand that ‘Whoops, something went wrong and that customers or workers may be impacted as well. If you compare this positive attitude to other businesses that tend to hide nonconformances and customer complaints, you can compare the difference in attitude.

To be honest I always get a bit concerned when I'm conducting an audit and I’m told that there haven’t been any customer complaints or feedback or any nonconformances recorded. 

“Oh no, we don't get any customer complaints”.

“We don't receive any feedback”.

“Nothing goes wrong here”.

At this point, I’m thinking “really”? I'm a little bit concerned at this point, as the whole process of understanding and improving your system is to identify these things both internally (from workers' feedback) and externally from customers or even suppliers.

Be open, be transparent and embrace nonconformances.

As I said, nonconformances are a positive thing because if you've identified them and more importantly if you're open to identifying them, you are in a good position to implement corrective action. Now you can get to the root cause of the issue and prevent recurrence or occurrence elsewhere (if you have multiple sites or locations).

Here at Auditor Training Online, we do our own internal audits here of course. When we find something that's not conforming, we are positive and thankful for the opportunity. We can then ask ourselves “why did this happen”, “How did we miss this”, “What can we do to prevent it from happening again”?
Preventing nonconformances from happening again is really what the intention is. You don't want to send yourself crazy and keep fixing the same thing over and over again. It's about preventing recurrence.

Within your own business, look at nonconformances as a positive.

Lead the way and set a positive example as this is a cultural shift. I’ve conducted audits at some businesses where managers were reprimanded, or lost bonuses if the external auditor raised a nonconformance! What a negative, finger-pointing culture that is! Always remember that it is the system, not the person.

Whether you’re an auditor, consultant, employee, or business owner you can lead the way to a positive outlook and culture shift.

If you want to learn more about management systems or nonconformances, just comment below or contact us now!

Happy auditing!