An Exemplar Global editorial

This past Thursday, November 23, was Thanksgiving Day in the United States. To the Americans on our team, in our customer base, and amongst our partners, we hope that your day of giving thanks was meaningful and fun.

Many nations around the world dedicate a holiday to reflect upon the things for which we should be grateful. Gratitude is now recognized by psychologists as a foundational element of good mental health. We can all take a moment, not just on Thanksgiving but anytime, to give thanks for the wonderful gifts we have in our lives. You might be thankful for your family, your health, your career, your dog, your home, or your car. Perhaps you reflect with gratitude on your positive mental outlook, your persistence, or your resilience. Gratitude could even encompass the struggles that made you who you are today.

That Thanksgiving list does not generally include something that few of us ever ponder, despite our common professional background. Who among us has considered giving thanks for standards and the system of conformity assessment that has developed since ISO began in the years shortly after the Second World War?

Think about it: Without management system standards, manufacturing would grind to a halt in a morass of waste and inefficiency. Modern telecommunications systems wouldn’t be able to connect. Food in stores and restaurants would sicken and kill astronomical numbers of people. International banking would fall apart. You wouldn’t be able to accurately pump and pay for gas. The list is, without hyperbole, practically endless.

The work that standards-development bodies do is a critical part of this equation, of course, but equally important is the dedication of professionals like yourself who implement and/or audit management systems according to the requirements of the standards themselves. The training and experience necessary to do this job well isn’t always recognized and appreciated, but it should be. Those who have gone through the rigor of certifying as an auditor play invaluable, irreplaceable roles in the success of the entire conformity-assessment system.

We hope you’ll see that there’s a lot to be thankful for—and proud of. For those of us at Exemplar Global, we’re particularly thankful for you, our customers. Those of you reading these words not only make us possible but also underpin the entire conformity-assessment industry. Whether you have just begun your career journey or have been doing this work for decades, you are a key part of this industry that keeps our food safe, makes our manufactured goods work, and allows our services to flow.

The world today is a complex and complicated place. Without standards and this system we’ve established to assess conformity to them, that complexity could easily spin out of control.  We should all be grateful for the job well done by yourselves and your peers.

So thanks for all you do and the work that your colleagues across the world do as well. You help support the success of conformity assessment, not to mention our highly technical and interconnected business world. It is in no small part due to your efforts that our modern world works.