Although quality standards are the way to have clear references for the tasks and the expected results, they are also usually a complication: generate them, update them, get them applied… I propose to discard the useless and rescue the essence of the quality standards.
Quality standards must be present whenever there is quality management. They are the way to have clear references to be able to contrast the actions that are implemented, and the results that are achieved.
However, quality standards are also a concern for leaders who have to drive this process. And many times, also a complication. Because they must keep records, documents, accustom staff to those bureaucratic tasks that generate so much resistance in them.
So I want to introduce you to new trends in quality standards. Those that discard the useless and rescue the essence. I will treat them in two parts:
- When is it necessary to create a quality standard and when not? How to create useful quality standards
Before developing the first of these points, let's see what a quality standard is and the types of quality standards we can find.
As I was just saying, a quality standard is an objective parameter to compare reality against it. It is like an ideal that we want to achieve. And we can classify them into:
- Performance standards: this is where we want to go. For example, we want to have a satisfaction rate of 95%. Process standards: how we have to develop the work to reach the result standard. For example, in the case of a laundry, a process standard may be the method of classifying garments to form a wash: by color, by type of fabric, etc.
When is it necessary to create a quality standard?
This is one of the first points that can complicate your life. Because it does not mean that by having everything standardized, operations are going to be efficient and satisfy the customer.
An old and obsolete approach said that, if you want to manage quality, you must convert all the operations carried out by the company into procedures (into quality standards).
This causes a heavy workload, and the result is almost always useless. Why? Because everything is documented, for which they need someone who dedicates themselves exclusively to that, and those documents have no meaning or value for the people who carry out the activities that are documented there.
Also, it is a job in itself to keep those documents up to date, work that is usually done for audits.
Consequence: a lot of papers that serve no one, more work just to generate and update them, and apathy of people, who feel controlled and demanded without understanding the true meaning.
The new approach to quality standards is to document processes only where necessary. This means, where it has been verified that a certain activity does not produce the same result if it is carried out in one way or another. You need to find the best method for that activity.
For example: placing a colored garment next to white garments is not the same. The classification process of the laundry to be washed is critical to the result. Therefore, it must be standardized. And it will be standardized after analyzing what is the best way to do it.
How to do a good standardization of processes
- The decision to standardize a process starts from a problem, or a result that does not satisfy us. For example: a client complained that her white shirt has been dyed light blue! The employees involved in this process are analyzing the best way to do it, and they agree that everyone will do it this way. Now it is time to standardize. When the best method has been found, and this was agreed.
The quality standard resulting from this process:
- It will be useful (because it prevents a problem), it will make sense to those who have to apply it (because it arises from an analysis they themselves did), and it will be accepted (they have proposed it themselves).
So when to create a quality standard?
- When the process is critical to the result, after a correct analysis of what is the best practice for that activity that seeks to standardize.
Do you have useful and applicable quality standards? Or do you use the old and obsolete methodology?
In this article I explain how to create useful quality standards for day-to-day operations, in such a way that these quality standards accompany the employee during the development of their tasks, guiding them to carry them out with excellence.
In the article "Quality standards that improve your marketing management", I have told you how you can do to standardize the activities that make up the provision of your service, just and necessary, and thus avoid excessive bureaucratization of your system.
Standardizing only key activities, emphasizing the critical aspects of those activities, ensures that operations will satisfy the customer, without "plastering" the employee, automating their tasks where they are not necessary.
We will see how to create useful quality standards for day-to-day operations. That these quality standards accompany the employee during the development of their tasks, guiding them to carry them out with excellence.
Types of quality standards
In the previous article we saw two types of quality standards, if we classify them according to the stage of the process:
- Results standards Process standards
But we can also classify the standards into two types, according to their format:
- Archivable standards Visual standards
And why so much classification? Because each type of standard serves different purposes. I told you at the beginning that we are looking for useful standards to carry out the tasks with excellence.
Let's see:
- Results standards: they serve precisely to evaluate the result of the tasks, but they are not capable of controlling the tasks during their execution. Process standards: these do control the tasks themselves, which are the service delivery process, but the key to knowing if they are effective or not is the format we use for the standard. The archivable standard is any standard that is written in a document that is then placed in a folder and archived. It could be a working procedure, a flow chart, an organization chart, a laboratory technique, etc. This type of standard can be used for training, that is, when a new worker enters, read the procedure to learn how to do a task, or for consultation, if there are doubts about any aspect of the task, consult the standard,or when there is a quality audit, for example, it will be what the auditor looks at. But this standard can hardly be useful while tasks are being performed; the visual standard, on the other hand, remains in view of the worker while performing her task. The visual standards are the ones that will really help the worker to attend to those key aspects that avoid important errors in the service. They will not go to the archived standard, but will be guided by the visual cues they encounter as they perform their tasks.The visual standards are the ones that will really help the worker to attend to those key aspects that avoid important errors in the service. They will not go to the archived standard, but will be guided by the visual cues they encounter as they perform their tasks.The visual standards are the ones that will really help the worker to attend to those key aspects that avoid important errors in the service. They will not go to the archived standard, but will be guided by the visual cues they encounter as they perform their tasks.
An example of quality standards
Imagine a driver of the passenger transport. To drive the bus one of the standards of the filing type, is the traffic law. This law establishes the general rules for driving on public roads.
A driver who does not know the traffic law is clearly not in a position to carry out his task effectively. However, he cannot consult the law while driving on the road. He doesn't even carry the law with him in the vehicle.
What are the standards that guide the driver on the route? Traffic signs, vehicle dashboard… There you find the standards that tell you: attention: you must stop, give priority to passing, do not exceed this speed, etc.
Let us suppose that a critical aspect for the task of the driver (because it has to do with the safety of the passengers), is the maximum speed.
The traffic law establishes maximum speeds on streets, avenues, routes, and highways. They are a general indication (the archivable standard).
However, along the way there are also top speed signs. These signals, and the indication of your speedometer, will tell the driver if you are within or outside the standards. Both are visual standards.
Being a critical factor, other standards can be added to reinforce the indication. For example, vehicle alarms, which alert the driver and passengers when the maximum allowed speed has been exceeded.
The more critical a factor is to the outcome of the task, the more the visual (or sensory, standards because it could be an auditory signal) need to be reinforced. The extreme of maximum security for the standards, are the safe proof systems (or Poka-Yoke), but it would be matter of another article.
I hope I have given you an overview of the quality standards that you can use, and how to make them really serve the worker in his tasks, and not just documents stored in a folder, without any application.
