Working with External Quality Standards and Awards

This book looks at how and where human resources (HR) meets quality management, and the implications of this. Most organizations, whatever their size or sector, struggle with demonstrating the value of continuous improvement (CI) and/or HR initiatives at a time when economic conditions are challenging in the global marketplace. Both within the UK and internationally, organizations will use continuous improvement and business excellence (BE) as a means of not only improving performance internally, but also to secure external recognition of their management practices, including people management, and therefore increase their competitiveness in their market. This text explores the potential overlaps between the two fields by considering how to address the development and implementation of a strategy to integrate CI/BE and human resource management.

Practical and applied, this text provides:

• A brief overview of the concepts of CI and BE
• An analysis of the strategic factors impacting on an organization’s decision-making around adopting a CI/BE approach, and the impact this may have on people management and development practices
• A review of some major external CI/BE accreditations and awards, and their value and how they might be used
• An analysis of the possible problems and outcomes which could be achieved by adopting such a CI/BE strategy and integrating it with people management and development activities

This book is ideal for any professional HR or performance improvement practitioner who wants to understand how a CI/BE approach could benefit their organization, as well as postgraduate students of HR or quality management.