Introduction
ISO 14001 is the world's most recognised environmental management system standard. If your organisation handles materials, energy, or waste; operates in regulated industries; or faces pressure from stakeholders to demonstrate environmental responsibility, you likely need it. More than 350,000 organisations across 171 countries hold ISO 14001 certification.
But certification is one thing. Genuine environmental management is another.
The standard requires organisations to establish, implement, and continuously improve an environmental management system. Auditors examine your processes, policies, and, crucially, your evidence. They need to see proof that your organisation understands its environmental impacts, that your workforce is aware of environmental responsibilities, and that your sustainability communications are actually working.
This is where most organisations stumble. They have the systems. They have the policies. But they lack the evidence that their environmental initiatives have genuine internal support and understanding.
This article explores five key ISO 14001 clauses, explains what auditors expect to see, shows how organisations typically gather evidence today, and reveals where SolasOS fills a critical gap.
Clause 4.2: Understanding the Needs and Expectations of Interested Parties
What the clause requires
ISO 14001:2015 mandates that organisations determine which interested parties are relevant to their environmental management system, understand their needs and expectations, and decide which of these they will address.
Interested parties might include employees, customers, regulators, local communities, shareholders, and NGOs. The clause requires you to track what these groups expect from your environmental performance.
What auditors want to see
Auditors expect a documented list of interested parties, evidence of engagement with them, and a record of their environmental expectations. They'll look for minutes from stakeholder meetings, survey results, or documented feedback.
How organisations gather evidence today
Most organisations conduct annual surveys or hold quarterly meetings with select stakeholder groups. HR departments circulate questionnaires, quality teams record feedback during compliance reviews, and senior leaders may host townhalls on sustainability. The responses land in spreadsheets, email threads, or meeting minutes. Collating this into a coherent picture of stakeholder sentiment on environmental performance is manual, time-consuming, and often incomplete. Employees who aren't invited to formal meetings rarely have their voices captured.
How SolasOS helps
SolasOS analyses internal communication data and measures sentiment to understand workplace culture across your entire organisation. Instead of relying on surveys that capture only those who respond, SolasOS provides continuous insight into how employees actually feel about your environmental initiatives. It identifies whether enthusiasm for sustainability programmes is widespread or concentrated in a few departments, flags emerging concerns about environmental performance, and reveals whether sentiment differs across geographic regions or business units.
This gives you a rich, ongoing understanding of employee expectations regarding environmental responsibility, which directly addresses the clause 4.2 requirement.
Clause 7.3: Awareness
What the clause requires
Organisations must ensure that workers are aware of the environmental management system, their roles and responsibilities in achieving its objectives, and the potential environmental impacts of their work.
This applies to permanent employees, contractors, temporary staff, and visitors where relevant. Everyone who can affect environmental outcomes must understand why it matters.
What auditors want to see
Auditors expect evidence that awareness communications have reached all personnel. This might include training attendance records, induction checklists, posters, email confirmations, or quiz results showing that staff understand their environmental responsibilities.
How organisations gather evidence today
HR departments schedule mandatory environmental awareness training, typically during induction and annually thereafter. Completion is tracked via learning management systems. Some organisations issue e-learning modules or print posters. Others hold team briefings. The assumption is that if training is delivered, awareness exists. But auditors increasingly ask difficult questions: "How do you know they understood it? How do you know the message actually landed?"
Most organisations struggle to answer. A few might conduct post-training quizzes, but these rarely measure whether awareness translates into genuine behaviour change or commitment.
How SolasOS helps
SolasOS measures whether environmental awareness communications are reaching everyone across your organisation. By analysing internal communications, it identifies whether employees are discussing environmental topics, whether sustainability messages are understood (not just received), and whether awareness varies by department, seniority, or location. It reveals gaps where awareness is weak and highlights departments where environmental messaging is resonating.
You can evidence that your workforce is genuinely aware, not just that they attended training. This transforms clause 7.3 from a checkbox exercise into something meaningful.
Clause 7.4: Communication
What the clause requires
Organisations must establish, implement, and maintain processes for internal and external communication relevant to the environmental management system. This includes communications about environmental policy, significant aspects, objectives, improvements, and the system itself.
Internal communications must ensure that environmental messages cascade through the organisation. External communications must reflect your environmental commitments to customers, regulators, and the public.
What auditors want to see
Auditors expect a communication plan (internal and external), evidence of its execution, records of who communicated what and when, and feedback on whether communications were effective.
How organisations gather evidence today
Most organisations document a communication strategy and produce monthly or quarterly newsletters mentioning sustainability initiatives. Email campaigns announce environmental targets. Posters appear on notice boards. Some record attendance at environmental townhalls. Auditors review these artefacts and tick boxes. But rarely does anyone measure whether internal communications are actually effective. Did the newsletter reach everyone? Did they read it? Did they understand it? Did it change their behaviour?
External communications are often outsourced to marketing, with little feedback loop into the environmental management system.
How SolasOS helps
SolasOS measures the effectiveness of your environmental communications. It analyses whether your messaging is reaching different parts of the organisation, whether it's resonating with employees (positive sentiment, engagement, discussion), and whether communications are driving the behaviour change you intend. It tracks whether external messages align with internal reality, identifying where disconnect exists.
This gives auditors far richer evidence than a communication plan and a newsletter archive. You can show that communications aren't just sent, but received, understood, and acted upon.
Clause 9.1: Monitoring, Measurement, Analysis and Evaluation
What the clause requires
Organisations must determine what needs monitoring and measurement, establish methods and timescales, analyse and evaluate the results, and report findings to management review.
This covers environmental aspects (energy use, emissions, waste), compliance obligations, and progress towards environmental objectives.
What auditors want to see
Auditors expect defined KPIs, monitoring schedules, records of monitoring activities, documented analyses, and evidence that results inform management decisions.
How organisations gather evidence today
Environmental teams track KPIs via spreadsheets, meter readings, waste audits, and regulatory reports. Quarterly management reviews discuss these figures. Environmental objectives and improvement programmes are adjusted based on the data. This is procedurally sound, but it typically focuses on physical environmental data (tonnes of waste, litres of water, kilowatt hours of energy).
What's often missing is measurement of the human factors: whether your workforce supports these objectives, whether sustainability initiatives have genuine buy-in, and whether engagement with environmental programmes is increasing or declining.
How SolasOS helps
SolasOS complements traditional environmental monitoring by tracking sentiment, engagement, and awareness around sustainability initiatives. It reveals whether your workforce is committed to meeting environmental objectives, whether a drop in engagement signals burnout or disengagement from sustainability efforts, and whether different business units have different levels of commitment.
You can now evidence that your environmental objectives have internal support, and track whether that support strengthens or weakens over time. This enriches your analysis and evaluation, providing context for your physical environmental data.
Clause 9.1.3: Analysis and Evaluation
What the clause requires
Specifically, organisations must analyse trends in their environmental performance, effectiveness of controls, and progress towards objectives. They must evaluate compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, and assess the environmental management system itself.
What auditors want to see
Auditors expect year-on-year trend analysis, identification of root causes for performance changes, and documented decisions about corrective or preventive actions.
How organisations gather evidence today
Environmental teams produce trend reports, often comparing current-year KPIs against previous years. If energy consumption decreased, they document the actions taken (equipment upgrades, awareness campaigns) that drove the improvement. If compliance lapses occur, they investigate and implement corrective actions.
What's harder to analyse is whether trends in environmental behaviour, engagement, and awareness correlate with improvements in physical environmental performance. Did the awareness campaign that increased employee engagement also correlate with better waste segregation? Is declining engagement predicting future performance slips?
How SolasOS helps
SolasOS offers retroactive analysis, meaning it can examine historical communication data and sentiment trends to reveal patterns. You can correlate shifts in employee sentiment about environmental initiatives with changes in your environmental KPIs. You can identify whether awareness campaigns preceded improvements in compliance or performance.
This provides auditors with a more complete narrative: not just "we used less energy this year" but "we used less energy because we conducted an awareness campaign that drove genuine employee engagement, and here's the data to prove it."
Evidence Collection: At a Glance
Clause | Traditional Evidence | SolasOS Additions |
4.2 Interested party needs | Surveys, meeting minutes | Continuous sentiment analysis across all employees; identifies gaps by department |
7.3 Awareness | Training records, attendance logs, quizzes | Measures whether awareness communications are landing; reveals who understands the message |
7.4 Communication | Communication plan, newsletters, posters | Tracks effectiveness of internal and external comms; measures engagement and behaviour change |
9.1 Monitoring | Environmental KPIs, meter readings, audits | Contextualises physical data with employee engagement and support for sustainability initiatives |
9.1.3 Analysis and evaluation | Year-on-year trend reports | Correlates sentiment trends with environmental performance; explains why performance improved or declined |
The Gap SolasOS Fills
ISO 14001 is fundamentally about managing environmental risk. But environmental management systems don't exist in isolation. They require buy-in from your workforce. Your employees must understand environmental risks, support your sustainability objectives, and change their behaviour accordingly.
Yet most organisations lack data on whether any of this is actually happening. They have tonnes of environmental data but precious little on the human side.
SolasOS analyses communication data and measures sentiment to understand whether your environmental management system has genuine internal support. It identifies whether your awareness initiatives are reaching everyone. It reveals whether your sustainability communications are driving engagement or falling flat. It tracks whether employee commitment to environmental objectives is strengthening or weakening.
This doesn't replace traditional environmental monitoring tools. You'll still need meters, audits, and compliance tracking. But SolasOS fills the gap that most organisations ignore: the evidence that your environmental management system is genuinely embedded in your organisation's culture.
For auditors, this transforms your ISO 14001 compliance from a technical exercise into something more compelling: proof that your workforce understands environmental responsibility, supports sustainability initiatives, and is engaged in making them work.
Next Steps
If your organisation is pursuing ISO 14001 certification or preparing for an audit, consider where your evidence gaps lie. Do you know whether your workforce actually understands their environmental responsibilities? Can you prove that your sustainability communications are landing? Can you evidence that employee engagement with environmental initiatives is genuine and widespread?
SolasOS provides the answers. It gathers the evidence that auditors increasingly expect to see: proof that your environmental management system isn't just a set of policies and procedures, but something embedded in how your organisation actually works.
To learn how SolasOS can strengthen your ISO 14001 compliance evidence, contact our team.
Solas Technologies is a specialist in workplace culture analytics. SolasOS analyses communication data to measure sentiment and engagement, helping organisations understand their workforce and identify talent risks. For medium-to-large enterprises across financial services and beyond, SolasOS provides the data that drives better people decisions.