In the past, we have already dealt with the question of which prerequisites must be given for a successful quality management. However, we have so far looked at the company as a whole. In this article, we want to deal exclusively with the perspective of the employees in quality management.
It is a consensus and is supported by numerous studies: The involvement and commitment of employees in quality management are critical factors for the success of the system.
The introduction of a quality management system is usually a strategic decision taken by the company management. The system is implemented and employees are expected to integrate the system into their daily work routine. It is not uncommon for management to have difficulty in promoting the desired level of employee acceptance of the new system. The employees often perceive the system as a bureaucratic burden. In their perception, it restricts them in the way they organize their work and hinders them in carrying out their regular activities. This regularly leads to the quality management system not producing the desired results.
The question, therefore, arises as to what requirements a quality management system must fulfill for the acceptance and proactive participation of employees. A current scientific study also deals with this question. This study is based on extensive interviews with people involved in quality management systems. The results of these interviews are further verified by comparing them with common behavioral theories. From this, conclusions are drawn as to how employees can be successfully integrated into quality management systems. The results of this study are presented in this article. You will find the source reference at the end of the article.
The study concludes that employee involvement in a quality management system can be divided into two main aspects. On the one hand, the extent to which employees are prepared to engage in the standardization of work processes and to actively support this standardization process. On the other hand, the extent to which employees actively participate in a continuous improvement process within the company.
Both are elementary concepts of quality management, which can be found in ISO 9001, Total Quality Management (TQM) or in the Japanese improvement philosophy Kaizen. The study shows that different basic requirements apply to these two aspects to ensure that employees are actively involved.
The acceptance of standardized working methods
The acceptance of standardized working methods is primarily based on the basic attitude of the employees towards quality management. Only if the employees have a positive attitude towards quality management are they prepared to accept standardized work processes. These interrelations can be explained with the help of common behavioral theories.
Positive attitude of the employees towards quality management
The Theory of Planned Behavior deals with the prediction of human behavior when the personal control of humans over their environment is limited. The theory describes what conditions must be met for a person to exhibit a desired behavior. For this reason, this theory can easily be applied to expectations that employees actively participate in quality management.
It can be derived from the theory that a person will show the desired behavior especially if he/she evaluates it positively. It is, therefore, necessary that employees develop a positive attitude towards quality management and standardized working methods. Only then will the employees get involved with quality management and standardization and support them.
It is difficult to change or influence the inner attitude of the employees. For this to succeed, it is necessary that the employees have sufficient knowledge of the quality management system and that the system has a recognizable added value and is highly user-friendly.
Knowledge of the requirements and function of quality management
The importance of comprehensive knowledge about the requirements and the functioning of quality management for the employees can be derived from the innovation diffusion theory. This theory, founded in sociology, aims to explain the diffusion and acceptance of innovations. The introduction of a quality management system within a company is a process of change and renewal. The introduction of a quality management system can, therefore, be seen as an innovation for the employees within a company.
According to theory, the decision of an individual to accept or reject an innovation is not spontaneous, but a subconscious and multi-level process. This so-called adoption process extends over five stages: Knowledge, conviction, attitude, implementation, and confirmation. Knowledge occurs when a person first learns about the innovation, develops an understanding of how it works and the benefits associated with the innovation. In the Attitude phase, the person develops a positive or negative attitude towards the innovation.
Next, the person decides to accept or reject the innovation (decision). Implementation takes place when the person uses the innovation. Finally, confirmation occurs when the person evaluates the results of the innovation-decision already made and either maintains or rejects the decision to implement.
The theory shows that sufficient knowledge is the prerequisite for developing a positive attitude. However, the employees often have no concrete idea of the requirements, the functioning and the objectives of quality management.
The employees involved in quality management must be aware that uniform and reproducible work results can only be achieved with the help of standardized work processes. Only with standardized and continuous information acquisition and documentation can process errors be systematically detected. If employees are unaware of these interrelationships, their perception is left with only pointless bureaucracy, which prevents them from doing their actual work.
Benefits and user-friendliness
The Technology Acceptance Model explains why and under what conditions a person accepts and uses a new system or technology. The model states that a person's attitude towards using a technology depends on two subjectively perceived aspects: the benefit and the usability of the technology.
The benefit is the subjective perception of a person of the extent to which using the system improves personal or business productivity. Whether people accept or reject a new system, therefore, depends on whether it helps them to do their work better. If employees do not perceive the quality management system as helpful either for themselves or for the company, they will not actively support the system.
The benefits and the associated performance advantages can be canceled out by insufficient user-friendliness. The user-friendliness of the system is a person's perception of how much effort is involved in learning or using the new technology.
If the system is too complicated or too difficult to use, it will not be used despite the benefits. Therefore a sufficient user-friendliness of the quality management system is of great importance for its acceptance.
For example, if work instructions are too complicated, too long, hard to find or simply not up to date, the usefulness and user-friendliness of the quality management system suffers significantly. This is also the case if the information has to be documented regularly, but the resulting findings are not used or reused, or if the system is only used to obtain a certificate.
In all these cases, no added value of the system is apparent to the employees and no active support can be expected from the employees.
Participation in the continuous improvement process
In addition to employee acceptance of standardized working methods, the active participation of employees in the continuous improvement process is also important. This requires a high level of motivation. To create this motivation, it is primarily important that the employees feel responsible for quality management themselves.
A widely used model to explain motivation at the workplace is the Job Characteristics Theory. This theory explains under which conditions the intrinsic work motivation of employees is promoted. According to this theory, "experienced responsibility" is an important psychological prerequisite for high work motivation.
Experienced responsibility" defines the extent to which the individual feels personally responsible and accountable for his/her own work results. According to theory, the intrinsic motivation and job satisfaction of employees are all the greater if employees are allowed to take on more responsibility. With a pronounced sense of responsibility, employees place more value on the quality of their work results and also develop a personal sense of concern if they do not achieve their desired goals.
So if the employees have the feeling that they are not an active part of quality management themselves, no sense of responsibility can develop. Sometimes even the mere designation of individual positions or departments within a company can promote this perception. If the impression is created that quality management is centrally anchored in one person, e.g. the quality management officer, or in one department, e.g. quality assurance, all other employees and departments feel uninvolved. Since the responsibility for quality management appears to lie with this particular person or department, all other employees and departments consequently have no responsibility for the quality management system. This perception is very hindering for the company-wide participation of employees in the continuous improvement process.
It is also hindering when employees are asked to submit suggestions for improvement, but these are only implemented reactively. If improvement measures are only implemented when serious problems occur, the employees develop the feeling that they have no influence on the improvement process. If an employee has the feeling that he has no influence on his environment, he will not develop a sense of responsibility for it.
Recommendations for better employee involvement
The theories listed so far and the findings derived from them are highly general and cannot be limited to the implementation of quality management systems. These findings should be considered in all change processes, e.g. when introducing further management systems (e.g. for environment, energy, information security, etc.) or when implementing new business software.
However, the study mentioned at the beginning also provides concrete advice and recommendations for the successful integration of employees into quality management. The main recommendations concern employee training, internal audit programs, quality management documents, IT systems to support quality management and management.
Trainings on quality management
Employee training is a very central prerequisite for the successful integration of employees into the quality management system. On the one hand, the general requirements and functionalities of quality management must be made accessible to the employees, and they must be made familiar with the advantages associated with this. However, this alone is not sufficient. The handling of quality management documents must also be specifically trained. The employees must know which documents are relevant for them and where and how to find them. It is therefore important to train the employees regularly and intensively. This applies especially to new employees in the company.
A better understanding of the interrelationships of quality management helps employees to better recognize the importance of their role within quality management and to take responsibility for it.
Internal audit programmes
The establishment of an internal audit program is probably the easiest and most efficient way to actively integrate employees into the quality management system.
Firstly, employees must be trained as internal auditors. This contributes to the fact that they need to significantly deepen their knowledge of the quality management system to perform this task successfully. By auditing company areas or processes that lie outside their regular responsibilities, employees gain further insights into the quality management system and also into the company itself. As a result, employees are becoming increasingly aware of the quality of products and processes and their interactions with one another. The experience and knowledge gained from the audits will also be incorporated by the employees in their areas of responsibility. This will benefit not only the audited business unit but also the business unit of the internal auditor itself.
As an internal auditor, an employee has a clear task with a concrete objective within quality management. This strengthens the employee's sense of responsibility and contributes to their identification with the quality management system.
However, it is not only the employee who carries out the audit who benefits. The employees of the audited business units also benefit. The employees will prepare themselves for the execution of the audits. The preparation requires and promotes an intensive content-related examination of their area of responsibility and the requirements of the quality management system. In this process, the employees gain further insights that contribute to developing a positive attitude towards the quality management system.
The auditing also increases the employees' sense of responsibility for their area of the company. This promotes employee motivation and thus active participation in the continuous improvement process. The exchange with the auditor also provides new impulses and suggestions for possible improvements.
For an internal audit program to function successfully, employees mustn't perceive it as an instrument for control. Rather, internal audits must be seen as an opportunity to strengthen interdepartmental exchange and to develop together as a company.
The quality management documents
The quality management documents must be designed in such a way that they represent a tangible added value for the employees. Only if the documents reflect the actual process flows in the company can they be helpful for the employees. If documents are only created to meet the requirements of certification bodies or customers, the documents are unlikely to provide added value for employees. The goal of quality management must be to provide effective assistance to employees. To achieve this, it is important that the documents are as short and easy to read as possible in order to provide an efficient source of information for the employees. The documents must be updated when necessary, and obsolete documents must be confiscated. Superfluous documents should be removed to ensure that the system is as lean and transparent as possible.
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IT system to map the quality management system
IT systems can provide a great deal of support both for easy retrieval of information and for simple information acquisition. The documents must be managed at a central point in the company. A central system can ensure that all information is easy to find and easily accessible. It is important to avoid employees storing documents on their drives. This regularly leads to unclear and non-transparent quality management systems. In this case, it is usually not possible to ensure that all employees work with up-to-date and uniform documents, as old and superfluous documents cannot be effectively retrieved.
Unclear and non-transparent document structures are frustrating, impractical and time-consuming for employees. The user-friendliness of the entire quality management system can be severely affected as a result. With the help of IT solutions, the filing of documents can be made much more efficient.
The role of management
As the last and perhaps most important point, the role of management in successfully integrating employees into the quality management system must be emphasized. To actively involve employees in the quality management system is a management task.
The management itself must show commitment to quality management. Only if management sets an example can employees be sufficiently motivated to actively participate in the quality management system. The commitment of the management clearly shows the employees the importance of quality management in the company.
If the management restricts itself solely to ensuring that the company is certified accordingly and otherwise shows no interest in the system in terms of content, the employees will quickly adapt to this behavior.
Employees must experience the support of their superiors for quality management and see that the continuous improvement process is also actively supported by management. For example, the employees' suggestions for improvement must be taken seriously and implemented.
The responsibilities for quality management must be clearly defined by the management throughout the company. This is important for several reasons. Firstly, it contributes greatly to the user-friendliness of the quality management system if the contact persons in the company can be identified. On the other hand, open communication helps those responsible to identify with their tasks and feel responsible for them.
To further strengthen this feeling of responsibility among the employees, it is helpful to define quality-related key figures for each department and each employee. The key figures additionally emphasize the importance of the quality management system. If the employees are assessed based on these key figures, quality management becomes an integral part of the daily work routine. As a result, quality management is no longer perceived as an additional burden in addition to regular work.
This is particularly important for departments and employees who have no direct influence on product quality and do not see themselves as part of the quality management system. Even in departments such as sales, marketing and controlling some processes should lead to uniform and reproducible results. These processes can also be standardized and continuously improved. A clear allocation of responsibilities and key figures by which process quality is measured can also strengthen the sense of responsibility for quality management in these departments.
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The scientific study mentioned in this article was made available to us by the Technische Universität Berlin and may not be freely available:
Manders, B. (2015): "Implementation and Impact of ISO 9001", ERIM Ph.D. Series Research in Management, Erasmus Research Institute of Management, S. 101-139.