Guideline 7. Striving for service excellence through continuous improvement

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 07/10/2018 - 09:46

The institution believes that service quality has no end point but can always be improved.

Guideline code

SQ_01000

Mechanism

The management should establish a continuous improvement programme to investigate, commission and execute service-quality-related projects within the institution’s project management framework. They should commission and resource projects according to established financial guidelines in terms of business case development and delivering a return on investment.
The management should assign a coordinator responsible for reporting on performance of the programme.
The programme coordinator should use participant and staff feedback to identify problem areas for further investigation and solicit potential solutions.
The management should treat continuous improvement as a management philosophy rather than a standard, rigid set of processes and, through it, aim to foster new ideas and innovation.

Parent

Structure

The management should strive for continuous improvement using the plan-do-check-act cycle:

Plan: Identify an opportunity and plan for change;
Do: Implement the change on a small scale;
Check: Use data to analyse the results of the change and determine whether it made a difference;
Act: If the change was successful, implement it on a wider scale and continuously assess results. If the change did not work, begin the cycle again.

The management should examine each initiative in terms of its value for money before committing resources and initiating it. For big initiatives requiring significant business transformation and/or ICT change, they should conduct a formal business value analysis or return-on-investment business case.
The management should manage a portfolio of initiatives focused on addressing service quality issues. If it seems there is no more to be done to improve service quality, they should revisit the service quality framework and the service charter.