The assignment of stakeholders according to their relevance depends primarily on the field of activity of your company. For example, a manufacturing chemical company with an environmental management system in accordance with ISO 14001 will in part define different criteria for the relevance of interested parties, for example with regard to neighbors or responsible authorities, than a parcel service provider whose quality management system follows the ISO 9001 standard. There, it is rather clients, customers and employees who are in the foreground.
Interested parties in ISO standards
With the changeover to the common basic structure (High Level Structure, HLS) from 2012, requirements for dealing with interested parties have gradually found their way into all major ISO management system standards. At the latest with the major revision of the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards in 2015, the term became familiar to a wide range of users.
Notes on documentation
If the general manager of a small operation doesn't need records to identify theirrelevant interested parties, that's believable. But if he or she decides to certify his management system, there is a documentation requirement. This is the case, for example, as soon as interested parties find their way into the management assessment in the form of customer feedback.
So it is not only for large companies and corporations that it makes sense to create a matrix in which the identified interested parties, their contact data, their expectations and the relevance assigned to them are entered. Management system standards require that this information be monitored and reviewed.
In principle, however, it is advisable to create written records, for example with the aid of a matrix, with all the necessary information. In the case of particularly relevant stakeholders, this should be done with the involvement of the relevant interested parties. This is usually not useless work, because the records are needed at the latest as input for the management evaluation anyway.
