What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on 5.1 Leadership and commitment?

Minutes showing top management setting or approving continuity policy and objectives; Evidence of BCMS requirements embedded in business process documentation; Approved budget or resource allocation traceable to the BCMS; Internal communications from top management about continuity; Evidence of managers below top level held accountable for continuity in their areas.

What is the most common gap auditors find on 5.1?

Commitment evidenced only by a signature on the policy

ISO 22301:2019 · Leadership, ISO 22301:2019

`5.1` Leadership and commitment

Top management must personally own the BCMS: aligning the continuity policy and objectives with the strategic direction, integrating BCMS requirements into business processes, making resources available, communicating why effective continuity and conformity matter, holding the BCMS to its intended outcomes, directing and supporting the people who deliver it, promoting continual improvement, and backing other managers to lead continuity in their own areas.

Source: ISO 22301:2019, 5.1. The statement above is our statement of the clause, read from the published text and cited so you can check it against the official text, not the instrument verbatim. Open ISO 22301:2019 in the compliance library.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

hard

to go live

Document repository

where the evidence lives

teal = a system already holds it · olive = produced at each review. To go live: easy when half or more of the artefacts are already held by a system, moderate from a quarter to a half, hard below a quarter.

These are the artefacts auditors commonly ask for on this requirement, our guidance rather than text from the standard. Your assessor decides what is sufficient in your context, and asks for samples across the period when a report covers one.

system holds itEvidence a system already holds

none for this control

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Minutes showing top management setting or approving continuity policy and objectives · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Evidence of BCMS requirements embedded in business process documentation · Document repository
Evidence of managers below top level held accountable for continuity in their areas · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Approved budget or resource allocation traceable to the BCMS · Document repository
Internal communications from top management about continuity · Document repository

First move

No system holds this evidence for you: it is people and documents. Reminders and routing to the owner still save time. Put the document under version control with an owner and review date, and log each review as a record with reviewer and date.

Common gaps auditors find

Commitment evidenced only by a signature on the policy
Continuity funded from a residual budget with no top management decision behind it
Continuity treated as a specialist function that no line manager is answerable for
No link demonstrable between continuity objectives and strategic direction

Do this for your whole sheet

Paste the rows you run your controls from and get this mapping for every control at once, with the periodic-review ones flagged and a first move per row. No account for the first run.

Build my evidence sheet

4.4 Business continuity management system · 5.2 Policy