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Quality Untangled

Quality untangled

Confusion about what the word 'quality' means often gets in the way of understanding and implementing quality improvement. Here is a simple guide to untangle the key terms and concepts.

  • Qualityis the degree to which an organisation meets the needs and expectations of its service users and other stakeholders. It is therefore not an activity - you can't 'do' quality. 
  • Quality improvementmeans either doing things better or doing better things. You could do less, and actually improve what you do or how you do it. 
  • Quality assuranceliterally means how you assure quality in your organisation. In order to provide high quality services consistently, you need to manage all your activities in a co-ordinated way. 
  • Your quality management system(or quality system) is made up of all the elements of organisational life that relate to the quality of your services e.g. governance, people and resource management, process management, etc. They need to be managed in a comprehensive and systematic way to assure quality. Every organisation has some sort of quality system, just like they have a financial system, but for many it is not consistently applied. 
  • To help you improve your quality system there are various quality standardsor models, such as PQASSO, ISO 9001 and the Excellence Model. These provide guidance on good management practice by setting a standard to be met or questioning what you currently do. 
  • If you want to use quality standards, make sure you choose the most appropriate tool for your needs. You could choose a tool that covers all organisational issues or one that focuses on specific elements, for example PQASSO covers all areas whilst IiP focuses on people management issues. You also need to decide if you will opt for a self assessed or externally validated tool.

There are lots of tools available to support organisations in assessing and managing the quality of their work, and a large number of books available on their use.  A good introduction is First Steps in Quality available via the CES website.

Taken from The National Performance Programme e-bulletin. which is a project of Charities Evaluation Services (CES).

Created on August 21st 2008

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