Keeping your Quality Assurance system under review

Innovation and continuous improvement is about developing an environment that promotes and rewards continuous improvement, innovation and learning. You are responsible to build a better and more effective work environment. You play an important role in building the culture, values and attitudes of the organization, and you need to foster innovative attitudes and practices, both in teams and across the organization.

Continuous improvement and innovation is closely related to becoming a learning organization and using a formal quality system.

Managers have a role in leading and managing Quality Assurance and improving the organization. this involves:

• developing systems
• analyzing information to monitor and adjust performance strategies, and
• manage opportunities for further improvements.
• checking that the approach achieves the organization's objectives.

Quality Assurance (QA) systems are organizational systems of checking the quality of your services or products. There are various kinds of quality systems such as the ISO standards and perhaps quality software, although we don't assume that you already have a formal quality system or special software.

Most QA systems incorporate continuous improvement that applies both to the organization and to the QA system itself. They always include procedures to check that workers work to a standard.

In other words, you need a simple system that is thoroughly integrated into what you do and that provides good value for the time you put into it. The biggest single problem with QA systems is that they can take a lot of time without adding much value. And it needs to be able to catch the points at which you are weakest and wouldn't otherwise notice, even if they are embarrassing and nobody likes it.

Continuous improvement is a system of having continual or regular reviews so that you can propose and implement improvements. It assumes that organizations don't reach a state of perfection where they can no longer improve. Some examples of continuous improvement processes are:

• staff meetings that review what happened and decide on improvements
• cyclical audits and reviews of workplace, team and individual performance
• evaluate and monitor effectiveness
• improving systems, processes, services and products
• policies and procedures that allow the organization to systematically review and improve the quality of its products, services and procedures
• comparing performance to industry benchmarks
• seeking and considering feedback from a range of stakeholders

You can even have KPIs for your quality system. For human service industries, KPIs are usually qualitative. But you might use quantitative (statistical) measures:

• goals
• customer service indicators (e.g. number of complaints per year, number or value of defective returned goods per quarter)
• OHS indicators (e.g. time lost from accidents)
• the percentage of items failing pre-delivery checks
• productivity gains
• value for time and effort
• staff performance KPIs.

Your QA system should keep your organization under review so you can make improvements. Your whole organization needs to be subject to the QA system. However, it might be helpful to identify your range of systems. In a much smaller organization, the systems might be very effective, but not be particularly distinct. In contrast a larger organization has more formalized systems so are easy to identify.

Four very different systems

Total Quality Management (TQM) has waxed and waned in popularity. In many cases, it is still considered best practice, including many Australian training sector units. Basically, TQM means that managers should gather feedback and suggestions from all stakeholders on anything the stakeholders see as important, consider them and make improvements.

It works very well if managers regulate the ways that people give input, and then periodically hold reviews and make improvements. It often generates ideas that are available through no other means. But TQM doesn't work if everybody spends lots of time generating huge amounts of suggestions for  improvement, because management has too many ideas to evaluate and implement. Consequently so nothing gets done, and people get frustrated that their ideas don't get considered. In other words, poorly-done TQM just wastes time.

The quality gates system presumes that a process takes place in stages. The end of each stage is a quality gate where products are checked. Defective products may not progress to the next stage.

Software-based policy is quite different again. How the software works is the policy and the quality system. In this approach, all staff use software that automatically follows the policy; they can't do the wrong thing because the software won't allow it. This is a useful approach even though it does not normally cover all aspects of a whole organization.

Control systems are ways of ensuring that people do things correctly. In a small organization, it may be as simple as checking regularly that you are on track according to the operation plan. Other kinds of control systems are:

• site visits
• internal reporting
• checks on income and expenditure
• internal audits
• anti-fraud systems
• waste prevention

See also this source for a generic system. (Link opens new window.)

 

Tasks

1. Put a QA system in place.
2. Develop appropriate procedures for Quality Assurance and continuous improvement and implement them.
3. Review your QA system to make sure it produces value for the time and money put into it.
4. Plan your control systems.
5. Develop and implement performance indicators to routinely monitor client service.
6. Keep your QA system under review for continuing relevance and make sure it produces value for the time and money you put into it. You might even have KPIs for your quality system. Develop ways of making sure that your system monitors operational progress.

 

Interview questions

1. Show examples of what you did to improve work outcomes or make your organization function more effectively.
2. Explain at least three continuous improvement models.
3. Explain how a quality system works.
4. Explain how to monitor performance and customer service.
5. Explain two different theories of quality management and continuous improvement.
6. Explain three different non-overlapping approaches to innovation that are appropriate for managers to implement.