Quality Improvement – Occupational

Quality Improvement – Occupational

 

Introduction

 

Quality Improvement

            According to  (1992), systemic quality improvement processes (QIPs) must include five overlapping phases.  They are the familiarization, vehicle emplacement, training, implementation of measurement techniques, and long-range or strategic planning. 

During the familiarization phase, which should always comes first,
upper-level management, quality department staff members, and consultants explain to the entire work force the need for improved quality.  They usually begin this process at the top of the organization, working their way down gradually to the hourly ranks.  They help employees realize that a successful quality improvement process is just that.  Rather than a project or an exercise with an end, it is an ongoing process that eventually causes the corporate culture to change, to become more participative and better integrated.

They explain the difference between quality control, which basically
checks for product defects and then tries to discover and eliminate the causes of these defects, and the new, more comprehensive quality thrust that realizes that better product quality results from improvements in the quality of manufacturing processes, management systems, and the work environment as well.  They stress that the ultimate objective of QIPs must be to improve the bottom line, that if the corporation fails financially, the rest is meaningless.

In abridgment, the familiarization phase is self-defining. Its purpose is
to offer the “why?” behind a QIP and the “what do we need to put into
place to accomplish our objectives?” It is ongoing. Presentations are made
continually, at all employee levels, with shifting emphasis depending on
the audience and the process stage. Tools used during the familiarization
phase can include posters, videos, presentations, stickers, visits to other sites–anything that will help employees: focus on improved quality as a
primary workplace objective; better comprehend the power being given
them; and better understand the corporation’s customized approach.

Vehicle Emplacement

Once the familiarization phase is well under way, most corporation jump directly to training rather than to team building.  Team building is very important since most quality consultants and members of QIP departments lie primarily in training, in working directly with individuals’ problems and group processes which is the major reason why they fail so quickly during the training. 

There is a critical difference between the familiarization phase and the training phase.  The former can be presented to large audiences and completed in several weeks, while the latter, when dealing with a company of any size, ultimately involves running several thousand students through well-organized two- to three-day sessions.  Such an effort is extremely drawn out so that by the time that everyone is trained, many of the earlier students have lost their enthusiasm, their workshop notebooks, or both.  At the same time, such training is rarely if ever adequate. Learning a technique in the classroom, even practicing it there, never gives students all the answers or prepares them fully for the real-life situation. A tremendous amount of support, therefore, is necessary when those initially trained begin passing down their new knowledge and skills to lower-level managers and hourly workers. Such support, however, is rarely available. The corporate quality staff and consultants can visit just so many work sites during the year and can answer just so many phone calls.

However, many middle managers see QIPs as an attempt to get rid of their jobs.  They’ve heard about too many layers of management and about the
push to get hourly workers to make more work-related decisions so that some of these layers can be eliminated.  Giving middle-level managers the responsibility of passing on problem-solving and decision-making skills is, in many cases, like asking the last werewolf to teach the pretty lady how to shoot silver bullets. It doesn’t make sense. Inexperienced or emotional supervisors create a fuss or refuse openly to cooperate. The old-timers go through the motions but then make sure that nothing happens.

The Training Phase

The training phase starts soon after the first teams are in place and
follows the team building phase through the organization. It “follows”
because initial facilitator training is done on the job and because team
members identify a large number of their own training needs.

Implementation of Measurement Techniques

The trick, however, is to give the teams ownership, to
let them decide that what is being offered is a good idea and should be spread
throughout the operation. The basic techniques involved–histograms, run
charts, control charts, flow charts, pareto, the fishbone, and scatter
charts–are not that difficult to teach or to use. The hard part traditionally
has been to get employees to want to use them.

There are three possible approaches. The first is coercion: learn how to
use these or start looking for another job. However, when employees are
forced to implement something they don’t understand the need for, they
tend to make a lot of mistakes.

The second approach is to educate workers to the value of measurement
techniques. Conscientious and ambitious employees will listen and will
make a sincere effort to implement what they have learned. Those just putting in their hours, however, will see the additional time and effort requirement as another unwelcome imposition and will take shortcuts.  

The third approach is to encourage the employees themselves to discover the value of the techniques. This is obviously superior, but how do we achieve it? We do so primarily by developing a strong sense of employee commitment to improved quality in products, manufacturing processes, management systems, and the work environment. But how do we engender this required commitment? The answer is that we foster it through the familiarization,
vehicle emplacement, and training phases that precede the introduction of
measurement techniques.

Strategic Planning

In order for QIP organizers, familiarizers, team facilitators, trainers, and
team members to succeed, they must have a framework built on clearly
defined organization objectives into which to fit their integrated efforts.
This framework, or overview, traditionally has been created through the
annual strategic planning exercise. Recently, however, strategic planning
has fallen on hard times. It is no longer considered a critical function in
many corporations. The future of such organizations is now being decided
by the president or CEO and a few confidantes, their decisions based on
a mix of financial considerations, their own observations, and gut instinct.

The reason for the recent disenchantment with strategic planning is
twofold. First, our much maligned short-term orientation makes the ability
to react quickly to shifting environmental circumstances more important
than the ability to gen1erate a long-term plan. Second, even if our orienta-
tion were long term, strategic planning, as it has been practiced during the
seventies and eighties, does not work.

Strategic planning is important, not only to quality improvement but to
the long-term health of any organization. Asian and European firms do it
effectively and have used the results to increase their share of world
markets. The problem, therefore, is not that strategic planning does not
work but that the paradigms that we have been using in the United States
are not right for our situation.

In order to be more successful, we need an approach that helps replace
or combine our short-term orientation with a long-term one; discourages
in-house competition for resources; helps generate consensus on priorities;
encourages the necessary integration; effectively reads and reacts to the
organization’s increasingly turbulent environment; and does not impose
unrealistic demands on those required to translate corporate objectives, as
defined, into reality.

Interactive planning, like comprehensive quality improvement efforts,
has five overlapping stages.  These are formulation of the mess; ends planning; means planning; resource planning; and implementation and control.

Formulation of the Mess –A “mess” is defined as a system of problems.  During this stage the future of an organization is charted if no changes are made and if the environment remains stable.

Ends Planning –During this stage participants define an “ideal.” They
are told that their company, mill, or department has been destroyed and
that they are responsible for totally rebuilding it. The charge, however, is
to design what ought to be ideally, rather than simply to improve on what
originally existed. The only three stipulations to this exercise are that the
systems designed must be technologically feasible, financially reasonable,
and capable of adapting to future environmental change.

Means Planning –During this stage projects that will help move the organization from its current “mess” toward the ideal are defined and prioritized. The QIP teams can play a key role in both definition and prioritization once overall organization objectives have been identified.

Resource Planning –The teams can contribute heavily to both the identification of available resources and allocation decisions.

Implementation and Control –The teams can assist in carrying out action steps.  They can also generate the information necessary for proper control and function as a channel for the upward and downward flow of this information.

ALL OR NOTHING

All systemic and successful QIPs must include the five phases discussed above. None of these phases can provide the desired results without the support of the others. Familiarization is of little value without a change vehicle, training, and a framework of long-range organization objectives. Teams cannot function effectively without proper familiarization, relevant training, and long-range objectives. Training is largely a waste of time without a change vehicle and a framework of objectives.  Measurement tools are all but useless by themselves. Finally, a strategic plan has no value unless employees understand it, are committed to it, and possess the knowledge and skills necessary to implement it.

While all five phases are important, vehicle emplacement, or team
building, is the most critical. Team building is also the most difficult phase to introduce. A majority of team building efforts in the United States have failed. They have done so mainly because those responsible have not understood the systemic nature of the beast that they were trying to tame and have left out critical pieces, or have been unable to link the pieces together properly.

Pre-Employment Screening

Hiring the right people is more important than ever before. In fact, hiring the right people with the right skills can make a difference to your organization and ultimately to your company’s financial success.

The cost of making poor hiring decisions is evidenced in high turnover, discontented employees and reduced productivity. These operational pit falls have devastating impact on the ability to grow your business and create a work environment that is stimulating, efficient and effective.

Why is there a Need for a Quality Improvement on Pre-employment Screening?

            Apart from issues of social justice, ethical behavior makes good business sense. Unethical behavior is expensive. Discriminatory practices, negligent hiring, and product quality failure can incur large legal judgments. In the United States, employee malfeasance costs companies billion to billion per year. The value of white collar deviance alone is one thousand percent of the annual loss incurred by all street crimes and burglaries. Thirty percent of American bankruptcies are substantially attributable to workers who willfully disregard company norms and social law (1993; 1991, 1991;  1987: 1985;1993;1988).  These are such a good reason for the importance of quality improvement on pre-employment screening. 

Many companies use pre-employment integrity tests to detect job applicants who are likely to violate standards of appropriate behavior.  These tests are controversial.  Although critics claim that research and ethical practice cannot support the use of these measures for employee selection, supporters have reached the opposite conclusion (1993; 1994; 1991; 1991; 1991;1994;  1987; 1990). Support for integrity testing is based on three conclusions. First, a growing consensus holds that pre-employment integrity tests predict important job-related criteria regardless of job type or setting. It is reasoned the tests tap broad personality constructs, such as “work conscientiousness,” which influences a wide range of job attitudes and behaviors. Second, the tests lack adverse impact against females or members of racial and ethnic minorities. Third, applicants generally regard the tests as appropriate for job screening ( 1993;  1993;  1989;  1984).

Pre-Employment Background Check

Why should you screen your employees with an employee background check?

• 67% of criminals released from prison in 1994 were re-arrested for at least one serious crime within the next three years (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 6/2/02)


• The National Crime Victimization Survey, released by the  Department of Justice in December of 2001, analyzed workplace violence from 1993 to 1999. On average, 1.7 million violent incidents per year were committed against employees at work.


• Nearly 60% of sex offenders are under conditional supervision (probation or parole) in the United States. (Bureau of Justice Statistics)

Small and mid-sized businesses are particularly vulnerable without an employee background check…

Small businesses are the most susceptible to employee fraud, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. In a small company, a single employee tends to have a large amount of responsibility and a small amount of managerial oversight. Obtaining access to sensitive information or the company’s finances is not very difficult for employees within smaller businesses.

Businesses with less than 100 people are more likely to incur fraud losses than companies with more than 10,000 employees. According to the 2002 Report to the Nation on Occupational Fraud, the average loss for a small business is 7,500 and the average loss for a large company is ,000. Victims recover less than 25% of their losses in about half of all cases filed ().

Pre-Employment Drug Test

Why perform a pre-employment drug test?

Substance abuse testing can decrease workplace accidents, cut production costs, save wasted salary dollars, cut increased medical costs, decrease workers’ compensation premiums, lower employee turnover, reduce theft and shrinkage, and increase morale and loyalty.

Consider these facts:

• Employees who abuse drugs are about 30-35% less productive than non-users.


• Employees who abuse drugs and alcohol cause more than 40% of on-the-job injuries.


• Employees who abuse drugs are more likely to steal to support their habit.


• Employed drug abusers cost their employers about twice as much in medical and worker compensation claims as their drug-free coworkers. ( 1999)

ScreenNow Employment () offers several assessment tools designed to improve your ability to select the right candidate and ultimately impact your employee retention, employee satisfaction and overall operating success.  It is committed to creating a safer and more secure workplace through the responsible use of information.   ScreenNow Skill Assessment tests will help you:

• Measure a candidate’s job expertise and confirm pre-existing knowledge


• Reduce employee turnover due to misrepresented qualifications


• Accurately quantify the skills of job candidates


• Motivate your existing staff to develop new skills


• Increase productivity, morale and commitment

ScreenNow Employment online is widely used in the United States by different industrial sectors and has already received positive feedbacks from its clients.  It is very useful in the screening process of these industries and became a great part of their development since they are guided into the best projected employee that they are looking for. 

Conclusion

            Quality improvement is every company’s practice in the hope of uplifting its standard for the growth and development of the employer, employee, product and services.  However, without proper knowledge in doing so, quality improvement process may seem worthless and instead, a costly practice.  It would take an extensive effort in the part of the company in achieving the desired quality improvement.  Resourcefulness and creativity will then be the key for this. 

            Having an inventive energy and the determination to reach such goal is not that tough nowadays.  With the advent of information technology that brings us closer to whatever queries we got in a hassle-free manner, this objective is not beyond our reach. 

Pre-employment Screening

            A company can then apparently recognize the link that binds quality improvement and pre-employment screening through research method.  This is very evident in the previous findings on the need and importance of development in the pre-employment screening. Not only is this paper could help in the improvement in the screening area but this study will also help upgrade the industrial sector as a whole.  In no longer time, the economic lifestyle of a company will then be change for good towards its goals and objectives. 

           

           

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