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What is quality?
Quality management is about making organisations perform for their stakeholders – from improving products, services, systems and processes, to making sure that the whole organisation is fit and effective. Managing quality means constantly pursuing excellence: making sure that what your organisation does is fit for purpose, and not only stays that way, but keeps improving. There's a lot more to managing quality than just manufacturing widgets without any defects or getting trains to run on time – although those things are certainly part of the picture. What qualifies as an acceptable level of quality for your organisation is ultimately a question for your stakeholders. And by stakeholders, we mean anyone who has an interest in the success of what your organisation does.
Customers will be the most important group of stakeholders for the majority of businesses, but investors, employees, suppliers and members of our wider society are stakeholders too. Delivering an acceptable level of quality in your organisation means knowing who your stakeholders are, understanding what their needs are and meeting those needs (or even better, exceeding expectations), both now and in the future. The IQCA believes this comes down to three things: strong governance to define the organisation's aims and translate them into action, robust systems of assurance to make sure things stay on track and a culture of improvement to keep getting better
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We believe quality is vital to successful organisations. Here’swhat we mean by quality and why we think you should care.
Why should organisations care about quality?
To survive and thrive. Managing quality effectively can enhance your organisation’s brand and reputation, protect it against risks, increase its efficiency, boost its profits and position it to keep on growing. All while making staff and customers happier. Quality is not just a box to be ticked or something you pay lip service to. Failures resulting from poor governance, ineffective assurance and resistance to change can, and do, have dire consequences for businesses, individuals and society as a whole.
Who is responsible for quality?
Everyone from the CEO to the intern is responsible for the quality of what they do. Different people will have responsibility or influence over different things that affect the quality of an organisation’s outputs, such as specifying requirements, meeting those requirements or determining the quality of something. Having said that, it’s important to have people who can provide the knowledge, tools and guidance to help everyone else play their part in determining and achieving the required level of quality. These people are quality professionals (find out more about them here) and their job is to make organisations better at producing outputs that satisfy the needs and expectations of their stakeholders.
How do organisations achieve quality?
EFirst and foremost, senior management must be committed to quality. Once that is the case, the IQCA believes that three things underpin successful quality management: effective governance that defines the organisation's aims and translates them into action, robust systems of assurance to make sure things stay on track, and a culture of improvement to keep getting better. These three themes are at the heart of the IQCA Competency Framework. When it comes to managing quality, there's a lot of help available. Quality professionals use numerous methods, metrics, tools and techniques. At the heart of them all is a focus on stakeholders, robust processes, strong leadership and continual improvement. Management systems defined by international standards such as ISO 9001 (for quality management systems), ISO 14001 (for environmental management systems) and the forthcoming ISO 45001 (for occupational health and safety systems) help organisations manage quality effectively. More and more organisations are now bringing these various systems together to create integrated management systems.