“We will compensate any violation of our promises to customers automatically. This means that if we do not keep our promise, then the next bill sent to customer is 20 euros less.” This is what Tallinna Vesi, a water services company from Estonia, promises its clients. On its website, there are 10 promises related to delivering accurate and on time services, which refer to supplying water and responding to client inquiries.
In Juran’s opinion, organizations need to ask themselves what their competitors do in order to perform at a high level. To find out the difference between performance results, companies introduce benchmarking as an approach for organizations that have adopted total quality management (TQM).
The phrase ”employees quit leaders not organization” is quite popular among HR professionals and it is not just an assumption. In 2005, Leigh Branham identified this issue by surveying 20,000 employees: leadership has a significant impact on staff retention.
Leaders not only influence how much time an employee spends in the organization, but also how well the individual performs. The human capital is a critical resource for an organization and can be transformed into a valuable competitive advantage. But how can leaders ensure that employees will perform at their best?
Manufacturing companies need to constantly determine which areas need improvement in order to remain competitive on the market. Hence, organizations often benchmark their performance against other organizations’ performance and determine performance gaps. Moreover, there are top performance companies that have not only improved their competitiveness due to benchmarking studies, but have also gained a top place and became a benchmark for the entire industry they belong to.
How much do you care for the people you work with? For the majority of us, work is all about executing individual tasks and sticking to our own cubicle. We like our daily routine, because it is familiar to us, but little do we want to know about what happens in other cubicles on the same floor. However, as much as we might enjoy having a quiet day at work, unchallenged activities make us poor performers. While we may not notice our own apathy and lack of involvement, people around us may well do so.