National Occupational Standards place responsibility for quality assurance firmly in the hands of individuals. They know clearly the standards they are expected to work to and can check they are consistently meeting these standards. Their managers also have a framework to assess the performance of their team members and be assured they are competent to carry out the activities assigned to them with the minimum of supervision (see the sections on Performance management and Assessment above). National Occupational Standards support all organisational quality assurance systems and can be formally linked to quality initiatives such as ISO9001:2000, Investors in People, Best Value and Charter Mark.