Staff Consultation

1. Report on importance of performing self assessment in businesses and provide details the methods used by company to determine the organization’s current ‘state of health’. (Assessment Criteria 4.1; Grading Criteria D4)

2. Explain the importance of employees engagement in consultation and record keeping between the supply chains. (Assessment Criteria 4.2, 4.3; Grading Criteria M4)

3. Develop a proposal or modification to the management of company as to how or what the company can do to improve its existing systems to remain competitive.

(Assessment Criteria 4.4)

1. Concept of Quality Management

Define quality: identifying and providing systems to meet/exceed customer needs and expectations, notion of self-assessment to establish the current position of an organization, aims and objectives, areas for improvement, staff training needs and planning for continuous improvement.

Customer satisfaction: understanding the customer, needs and expectations, responding to customer demand, meeting or exceeding expectations, value for money, added value and repeat custom.

Measurement of quality: systems documentation, procedures for all operations, evaluating own procedures, comparisons with past performance/future plans (business aims and objectives), competitors, industry standards, priorities for action and benchmarking.

Context: e.g. hospitality and catering, sports and leisure, travel and tourism.

2. Four Different Quality Management Schemes

Rationale: orientation/emphasis of approach e.g. ISO 9000, Baldrige Award, Continuous Improvement / Quality Management (CI / QM) and Six Sigma.

Organizations: inter-relationships between systems, staff and customer, appropriateness of each to commercial operations.

Similarities and differences: structures of schemes, applications, costs, implementation periods, use of documentation, application of standards, identification of actions required, assessment methodology, orientation towards customer and staff or organization, effectiveness as a means to improve service quality.

Communication and record keeping: importance of communication across whole organization (vertical/horizontal), establishing agreement through consultation, notifying actions required, currency, accuracy and relevance of records kept, comparison with historical data, similar organizations elsewhere, industry standards and record keeping.

3. Quality Controls

Customer information: opening times, location, price lists, facilities, activities, staffing levels, promotional material, raising awareness, creating true image, targeting all groups and conveying value for money.

User and non-user surveys: profile of users, regularity of visits, spend/visit, facilities used, likes, dislikes, preferences, suggestions and complaints.

Profile of non-users: majority group, reasons for non-use, expectations/perceptions of service, barriers to access, action required, encouraging and converting non-users.

Consultation: questionnaires (distributed internally/externally), suggestion schemes, complaints procedures, focus groups, open meetings, targeted mail drop, direct approach to group leaders and groups.

Complaints: distribution of forms (send out/collect), internal/external, framing questions, customer friendly, easy to analyze, areas for improvement, response time, period for remedial action, communication with complainants and measurement of customer satisfaction.

4. Principles of Quality Management

Self-assessment: validity of self-assessment e.g. subjective, bias, one dimensional; judgment based on current practice, comparison e.g. with past performance of organization, against competition, against benchmarks for future; comparisons with similar organizations and industry standards.

Staff consultation: setting the scene, explaining rationale (objective of quality scheme), processes involved, requirements and commitment from staff, communication and reporting mechanisms, keeping team updated and engaged, implementation, feedback and review.

Service improvements: application of concepts, documentation, administrative processes for communication, applying standards, monitoring, action on improvements, performance indicators, response times, feedback and review.