An objective, not a wish — the objectives and programmes register 6.2
An indicator measures; an objective commits. That difference is everything that separates clause 6.2 from your KPI wall: "incident rate" is an indicator, while "cut the incident rate from 9 to 3 before year end, owned by the safety manager, with a training budget of X" is an objective.
The fields are the clause's questions
| Field | 6.2 question |
|---|---|
| Title and description | What will be achieved |
| Owner | Who is responsible |
| Target date | When it completes |
| Resources | With what resources |
| How results are evaluated | How you will know you arrived |
| Baseline and target value | Measurability |
The objective's scope: why do we ask?
When you create an objective you pick its scope: occupational health & safety · quality · environment · energy · facility management. It is a required field, because clause 6.2 asks each management system about its own objectives: quality objectives for the quality system, energy objectives for the energy system.
If we read your whole register as one signal, the "quality objectives" clause in ISO 9001 would go green because of an energy objective you recorded — and your board would look better than your reality, which is the worst thing a compliance system can do. With a scope on each objective, every standard reads only its own system's objectives.
And scope widens integration rather than narrowing it: one safety objective satisfies clause 6.2 across every safety standard you track — the international one and the local regulatory ones alike. An objective that genuinely serves two systems is recorded twice, which is exactly what an auditor expects to see in each system's objective list.
Two guards at activation — not at creation
A draft can be written at leisure. But the active objective is what you are held to in front of an auditor, so an objective only becomes active if:
- It is measurable: an explicit target value, or a link to a live indicator on your KPI wall. Anything else is a wish, not an objective.
- It has a programme: at least one action saying what will be done, by whom and by when. An objective without a programme is half a clause.
Link the objective to a live indicator whenever you can
When you link an objective to an indicator, the answer to "how are results evaluated?" becomes a number the platform computes, not a paragraph written the night before the audit. That is the strongest thing you can hand an auditor asking about monitoring.
The programme: from a list of intentions to actual work
Every programme action carries a "Turn into a task" button. Pressing it mints a real task on the default board with its owner and due date, so it is tracked where the rest of your work is tracked — not on a governance island someone opens once a year.
After conversion, the action's status follows the task's: finish the task on the board and the action goes quiet in the programme. Never two rows for one truth.
The three endings
Achieved · Missed · Cancelled. Each is an ending that freezes the objective: no edits afterwards. If you need to go back there is exactly one governed route — the Resume button — which clears the closure stamp and returns the objective to active.
"Missed" is not a flaw in the register; it is honesty in it. An auditor reading a register where every objective was achieved becomes suspicious; an auditor reading a missed objective with a decision recorded in the management review minutes is reassured.
Where does it show up?
The "Extent to which objectives are met" section of the management review minutes now reads this register: how many are active, how many achieved, how many overdue — and it names the overdue ones.
Where to find it: sidebar → Governance → Objectives & programmes.