In recent years, the implementation of quality management systems based on ISO 9001 has clearly gone beyond the traditional industrial and service subsectors. It has started to have a growing influence on some peripheral subsectors to the standard home market, such as those of health and social services. In this article, the influence of the main global management meta‐standard is analyzed from a macroergonomic perspective in one of the aforementioned sectors. Based on an empirical exploratory study carried out in two Spanish organizations belonging to the subsector of residential care homes for elderly persons, the influence of the adoption of the standard is analyzed, focusing on the quality of working life of the direct attention employees. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.