Operational Excellence Requires A Culture Of Quality

David Bolton
By David Bolton on December 19, 2019

Companies who don’t foster a path towards operational excellence within their workforce could find that their employees are less engaged and, ultimately, less productive. According to a recently released report, organizations that prioritize both employee engagement and a quality culture are likely to experience an increase in productivity and customer satisfaction. Forbes reported that a global survey of over 5,000 people by workplace management platform Wrike found that employee engagement was high, with 91 percent of respondents claiming that they had a personal commitment to a company’s goals and its overall success.

The caveat to this identified commitment, the report said, was the simple fact that employee engagement is not the same as happiness or satisfaction. Rather, a high level of engagement was deemed to be the amount of passion the individual employee had for their work and their willingness to put in the required effort. In fact, engagement did not always equal productivity, with around 48 percent of respondents saying that they were productive less than 75 percent of the time.

This disconnect between engagement and productivity is one that is echoed throughout the business world, the authors of the Wrike report said. A companion study by the company revealed that employees wasted more than 21 hours every week looking for documents or specific project information. In addition, 30 percent of respondents said that their productivity levels could increase if the repetitive elements of their job were eliminated by automated processes.

Operational excellence is an achievable goal

With that in mind, is it all possible that providing the workforce with business optimization tools that encourage operational excellence at all levels are the secret sauce that fuels the culture of quality? And, if employee engagement is a key factor in ongoing quality initiatives and continuous improvement, how can companies better integrate business strategies that empower the employee and, importantly, make them more productive?

ETQ’s latest enhancement to its Reliance 2019 quality management system (QMS) software  is one way that companies can bridge the gap and reduce any dissonance between operational excellence and perceived worker engagement levels. The update – which comes hot on the heels of the release of analytics tool ETQ Insights – incorporates a host of new capabilities into a SaaS platform that is trusted by more than 550 brands.

These new capabilities include an enhanced training management application, a new release management application, additional localized language packs to automate translations and new mobile capabilities.

The focus, as ever, is on excellence through quality and ETQ customers can increase the ROI of existing QMS investments by both engaging and empowering employees or end users at every level. When you factor in the comprehensive view of quality data that ETQ Insights provides, the overriding message is that operational excellence is both a driving force and an achievable goal.

The update to ETQ’s signature offering will allow companies to move further along the quality journey and enhance their reputation as a quality leader. To be more specific, the latest version of ETQ Reliance will;

  • Drive uniform quality management procedures, create a stronger culture of quality and help companies better prepare for compliance audits throughout the organization.
  • Allow companies to deploy new and updated QMS applications to the internal user community.
  • Enable end users to access and manage key quality data at any time and from anywhere.
  • Encourage localization by translating embedded Reliance applications into different languages – for the moment, these are limited to French, German, Spanish and simplified Chinese. In addition, administrators will be able to translate any native applications built on Reliance directly into the platform.

“ETQ’s mission is to enable customers to use quality as an avenue for continuous improvement and operational excellence,” said Rob Gremley, CEO of ETQ, in a press release. “The enhancements delivered in our latest version of ETQ Reliance, combined with our revolutionary analytics platform, ETQ Insights, will enable our customers to more efficiently build a culture of quality that improves their end users’ experiences, thus driving brand loyalty and enhancing overall business performance.”

ETQ’s stated belief that quality creates limitless possibilities is one of the reasons that companies trust us to deliver effective software solutions. Our quality management software features built-in best practices and best-in-class flexibility, both of which allow brands to optimize the critical processes that drive excellence through quality.

To find out more about how ETQ can help your organization along its quality journey, contact us today. Alternatively, reach out to our quality professionals and ask for a demo of our Reliance 2019 SaaS solution.

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