It is not easy to build a culture of quality. However, many errors will be made without these principles. Errors are costly, and that is why a quality-driven culture, preventing many mistakes, may save you money because your expenses on corrections of those errors will be lower.
How can you establish a culture that will decrease the number of errors made by employees? All the popular options – monetary incentives, training and best practice sharing were not successful enough. The Open forum website wrote about the most critical factors that proved to have the biggest impact on a culture of quality.
1. Managers who say that quality is a priority have to stand up for this statement.
Otherwise, it will be very difficult to embed quality into the company culture. Companies with a strong culture of quality tend to be both more stable and more dynamic. It can make employees try harder and be more proactive.
2. Quality has many meanings.
For some people, it is about customer experience, for some it is all about cost savings. You need to create and promote the message that there is no unified solution. This message should be delivered by front-line managers to their subordinates.
3. Balance leadership engagement with engagement of peers.
Employees have to be allowed to execute their own ideas about what to change in order to achieve higher quality. Remember, too much top-down involvement destroys authenticity.
4. Trust your employees' judgement.
Employees in companies where the culture is quality-driven are empowered to apply their own judgment and decisions to situations that cannot be solved by the book. That is possible only when employees understand how quality is related to their tasks and they have to be ready to draw attention to rules that make it difficult for them to pursue quality. Proper communication here is the key – the responsibility lies on both sides.
-jk-