(Chartered Quality Institute: London) -- In a global economy where success depends on quality, innovation, and sustainability, World Quality Day on Nov. 11 offers an ideal opportunity to focus on the importance of quality and reinforce these concepts as the foundations of your business. Organizations from all over the world will be holding activities as part of World Quality Day, which was introduced by the United Nations in 1990 to increase worldwide awareness of the important contribution that quality makes toward a nation’s and an organization’s growth and prosperity.
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This year’s theme, “Out of the Crisis,” will focus on what a fit organization looks like and the role that quality management professionals play in facilitating fitness, from aligning the organization’s processes to its strategic goals, to ensuring that the organization and its people consistently understand and can deliver on stakeholder needs, to helping the organization look at processes, and prioritize and deliver improvement.
Organizations that will come out of the crisis are those that focus on current and potential customers, and have the flexibility to innovate and change to meet their requirements. They are determined to look at the ways they can improve their business processes to maximize use of resources, increase efficiency, and reduce redundancy and waste. And they recognize that their people are the key to all this. Chartered Quality Institute (CQI) regions will be hosting Loxham Lecture events on this topic Nov. 8–12.
For quality to become an important focus of business, it must be valued by the whole organization. Make employees aware of what quality means to your organization and show them how they can contribute. Following are a few ideas for initiatives:
• Organize joint workshops with clients and internal staff to focus on the practical realization of quality
• Conduct training courses on quality for all employees
• Ask employees to come up with ways of improving quality approaches internally, including small presentations, videos, and handouts containing articles from quality experts
• Sponsor a competition where employees think of three ways in which they can improve quality in their work and how these ideas can be implemented on World Quality Day
• Ask a quality group to plan fun activities throughout the year to maintain awareness
• Place posters around the workplace and hand out World Quality Day promotional packs to help spread the word
• Hold monthly lunch-and-learn sessions for a general discussion of quality
The term “quality” is everywhere, and for organizations, deploying quality approaches is a prerequisite for creating a sustainable business. Quality approaches can benefit your organization in many ways:
• Improving customer satisfaction
• Reducing costs and improve profitability (see CQI’s recent YouGov survey for more information)
• Supporting improvement and innovation
• Helping to identify and manage risk
• Ensuring corporate care and responsibility
For more information, visit CQI’s World Quality Day page.
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