Abstract
Many research studies have shown that the lack of an effective performance assessment system in organization often renders it impossible for it to realize much needed reforms in the development, growth and improvement in organizational operations (Taticchi 124). At the present, almost all organizations are striving to identify ways and improvement opportunities by encouraging the strength areas and working on the weak points. To achieve this, organizations are increasingly adopting the European Foundation for Quality Management (EQFM) excellence model which focuses on sustainable quality management together with self assessment system (Kanji 96).
This paper shall discuss how Dubai government (in the United Arab Emirates) has implemented the EFQM excellence model. There shall be a review of how the organization conducted self assessment, the organizational and people-centered process that were streamlined in the course of implementing the model, and finally how it utilized the RADAR technique in assess the targeted results it has achieved.
Introduction
The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) excellence model is a self-assessment framework used by organizations to measure their strengths as well as areas requiring improvement across all of its operations. It was first developed in 1991 by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) with aim of helping management to integrate Total Quality Management (TQM) principles (UN Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs 219). The model primarily focuses on what the particular company does or could do in the provision of excellent service or product to either its customers, service users, stakeholders or all of them. The management framework has been adopted by 30,000 organizations mostly in Europe and in other regions of the world such the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (Hakes 181). The model usually used as a diagnostic tool where it takes a holistic view of the organization regardless of size or sector.
The EFQM excellence model is most prominent in the private sector but public and voluntary organizations are also fast picking it up for its benefits. Basically, the EFQM is a non-prescriptive model which does not demand strict following of a set of standards or rules. This is because it offers an extensive and coherent set of assumptions relating to what is good for organization together with its management. The model affords individual organizations the freedom to employ it in its own unique way in the management and development of improvement strategies, under the watch of those making use of the methods as opposed to control of an external evaluator principles (UN Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs 221).
Dubai has emerged as one of the rapidly developing business hubs in the United Arab Emirates and the world at large. This has been made possible by the Dubai government which has strived to develop it a modern and dynamic city. The EFQM excellence model has been applied to the city, making it to stand out as a success story as it has realized the fruits of performance measurement together with excellence strategies (Taticchi 123). In the effort to modernize ‘the way it does government’, the Dubai Government Excellence Program (DGEP) program was adopted (El-Kahlout 89). This has made Dubai to not only become more efficient, but also flexible and competitive in the present changing business environment.
The DGEP represents an integrated compressive program established by The Executive Council, Government of Dubai whose vision is “to attain international levels of excellence in government performance in Dubai.” It sought to promote the principles of excellence, quality, creativity, integrating the best administrative professional practices along with implementing state-of-the-art and effective working methods. These include the Government Excellence Award and a comprehensive report for all departments depicting their strengths and areas needing improvement following the criteria of the excellence model (Kanji 99). In general, the DGEP Model is based on the EFQM Excellence Model and having extra emphasis on innovation and transparency. It is geared at achieving international levels through such activities as provision of a clear guiding excellence model along with a range of sustainable improvement undertakings and development practices.
Vision of the DGEP: “To attain world-class levels of excellence in the performance of Dubai Government Authorities, Agencies and Departments.”
Mission of the DGEP: “To promote, assess & reward excellence in the performance of Dubai Government Authorities, Agencies and Departments” (El-Kahlout 54)
The EFQM excellence framework
The EFQM excellence framework shows the manner in which successful organizations can work to develop a winning formula so as to achieve competitive advantage in their respective industries or field of business. It has nine criteria or ‘big ideas’ that define the premise upon which it is built and strive to address all of an organization’s activities group into main groups: Enablers and Results. The Enabler criteria relates to how an organization conducts itself, manages its staff and resources, plans its strategy, reviews and monitors its key processes (Stapenhurst 200). On the other hand, the Results are concerned with what the organization achieves. These entail the degree of satisfaction registered by the organization’s staff and customers, its impact on the society at large as well as its key performance indicators.
Each of the individual nine criteria is split to describe further the concept of ‘Excellence’ in the specific are as well as examining how well the organization in question is performing through a series of practical questions to pose to itself.
Figure 1: The excellence Model Framework
Source: http://www.bqf.org.uk/ex_framework.htm
The arrows in the frameworks serve to not only emphasize the obviously dynamic nature of business, but also to demonstrate that both innovation and learning elements help leaders and managers to improve the enablers which result in better results. When using the EQFL model, the beginning point for majority of organization is often to gather evidence pertaining to the nine criteria outlined in the model ((Taticchi 101). This is a self-assessment process.
Self Assessment
In doing self assessment through the EFQM excellence model, management of an organization is able to identify its strengths and opportunities for improvement which are addressable by every member of the organization in the effort to achieve realistic goals. A gap analysis is carried out which enable the definition and prioritization of improvement plans aimed to achieve sustainable growth along with enhanced performance. The percentages indicated in the framework represent the weightings relied upon by EFQM assessment bodies in reaching scores for applications.
RADAR Logic
RADAR is (an acronym for Results, Approach, Deployment, Assessment and Review) is a logic at the centre of the EFQM excellence model which greatly applies to the self assessment process. It assists organizations to identify, prioritize, plan as well as implement adjustments for improvement as necessary. When using the EFQM model together with the RADAR logic in the assessment of an organization, the Enabler criterion segment is dealt with using ‘approach’, deployment’, ‘assessment & review’, while the Result-criterion-part is addressed by element of ‘Results.’ According to the RADAR Logic, therefore, the following are required of an organization when using the EFQM excellence model in self assessment:
i) Outline the specific Results it is targeting as a section of its policy and strategy making process. The results reflect the financial together with the operational performance of the given organization along with the perceptions of its stakeholders.
ii) Plan and develop a fully integrated block of sound Approaches designed to deliver the targeted Results in the short term and long term.
iii) Implement the approaches in a most systematic of ways possible
iv) Assess & Review the deployed approaches through monitoring and analyzing of the results achieved from ongoing learning activities.
The assessment of the DGEP Model for institutional excellence utilized the RADAR Logic.
The RADAR Cycle
Source: http://www.efqm.org/en/PdfResources/EFQM%20Excellence%20Model%20Teaser.pdf
Methods of Self Assessment
There are a number of self assessment methods which can be categorized in three groups:
i) Simple perception-centered approaches – these use the nine major criteria purely of the EFQM excellence model.
ii) Facilitated workshop approaches – these relate to the nine main criteria and largely to the thirty two sub-criterion aspects of the EFQM excellence model
iii) Awards submission (also called simulation methods) – these utilize the EFQM excellence model in its entirety to sub criterion elements level.
Self assessment of Dubai Government
The Dubai government departments and employees had the following features before the adoption of the DGEP that greatly incorporates elements of EFQM and RADAR Logic:
– Overly traditional way of thinking which lacked both creativity and innovation.
– Slow, inefficient, and ineffective transactions.
– Lack of focus on customers
– Absence of transparency and accountability
However, many positive changes were realized after the establishment of the new excellence model. First, the public sector was transformed and begun excelling over the private sector in a number of areas traditionally dominated by the latter (Taticchi 95). Similarly, the governmental sector surpassed the private sector in such areas as proficiency, provision of distinguished services, and initiative among others. The public sector was also able to expand its scopes of transparency as its operations are no longer wrapped in secrecy. In addition, the model has helped the Dubai government to effectively fight corruption through establishment of governance and monitoring mechanisms (Hakes 182). Finally, the model has been lauded for enabling government sector to embrace modern concepts such as strategic planning, balanced scorecard, strategic HR management, and knowledge management.
Sub-criteria resources for Self Assessment
1. Leadership – deals with the degree to which the leadership develops and enables the meeting of the vision and mission of the organization; queries whether the leadership does develop and nurture value systems along with behaviors necessary to attain sustainable success. In addition, there is assessment of whether the organization’s leadership is indeed responsive to the needs of its customers as well as market dynamics.
It often does not require the entire management to facilitate the EQFM excellence model because an individual leader can manage it. In most organizations, a modest cross-functional team (between 3-4 individuals) is often formed to lead the program. However, the active participation of the management and senior personnel of the organization is still required. The process is eased when good rapport is created with the staff because they are bound to be involved in some way in the implementation of the excellence model in the organization.
2. Policy and Strategy – this criterion investigates how an organization goes about in achieving its goals, vision and mission by using stakeholder-focused strategy & planning, target setting, policies and relevant management processes.
The policy strategy therefore examines how policy and strategy are founded on current and future stakeholder needs & expectations; information from performance measurement, research, learning & creativity related activities. Also there is examination of how the policies and strategies are developed, reviewed and updated, as well as how they are communicated and implemented.
3. People – this criterion defines how the organization under assessment manages, develops and also releases the knowledge along with full potential of its staff at an individual, team-based and organization-wide level. It also examines how these operations are planned so as to support to its policy and strategy together with the effectiveness of its operations.
4. Partnerships and resources – assessment of an organization’s mechanism in planning and managing of its internal resources and external partnerships so as to support its policy and strategy together with the effectiveness of its processes. Thus, it deals with how management of external partnerships, finances, buildings & equipment & materials, technology, and information & knowledge are managed in the organization.
5. Processes – the criterion assesses how the organization does its designing, management and improvement of its operations in the effort to support the policy and strategy along with how it fully satisfies and create increasing value for the customer s and other stakeholders.
6. Customer results – the criterion addresses the achievements of the organization in relation to its external customers. There are measures relating to perception together with performance indicators.
7. People results – the criterion explores the degree of performance the organization is achieving as pertains to employee satisfaction and performance. It examines the approach being used to determine the perceptions of employees and reaching employee performance targets.
8. Society results – this is a criterion that assesses the degree of performance the organization is attaining in terms of community/society, and performance. The approaches the organization employs to determine the perceptions of the community/society along with the actual results it is attaining in terms of community/society satisfaction and meeting their compliance & performance goals.
9. Key performance results – this is a final criterion that assesses degree of performance the organization is achieving in the context of its planned goals and targets. It considers the financial results as well as other key performance results.
Source: http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un-dpadm/unpan046074.pdf
DGEP models and initiatives have been able to achieve its initial goals of transforming Dubai’s government department into world class centers of excellence in which the focus is on achieving customer satisfaction. This has been done using a detailed of Customer Relation Management mechanisms, the likes of customer communication and feedback, complaints, customer satisfaction surveys, as well as mystery shoppers (Stapenhurst 389).. The DGEP has also succeeded in raising its level performance through provision of incentives that encourage departments to better their quality of public services.
Benefits of the EFQM excellence model
The EFQM excellence model has a number of potential benefits to the organization using it. First, the framework gives a holistic model which systematically responds to a an extensive range of organizational quality issues besides providing attention to implications through the Results segment.
Secondly, the excellence model offers a clear diagnosis of the activities of an organization besides being instrumental to planning because it makes connections between the organization’s activities and the outcomes it attains, highlighting how they are attained. Similarly, the excellence framework strives to integrate a culture of consistent improvement in an organization (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development 55).
Furthermore, the excellence model is flexible enough to be employed in bite-sized portions of for particular issues such as a thorough analysis of the organization’s corporate social responsibility in less than one day along with offering a framework for detailed review of the entire activities of the organization over a period of several months.
Another potential benefit of the model is in the fact that it does not require external validation and can be purely used as an internally oriented self-assessment toolkit that affords the organization to be totally open and honest in gauging its performance.
In addition, the EFQM scoring gives an organization an internal benchmark on which it will conduct its next self assessment so as to capture trends (Stapenhurst 365). Likewise, the model can also come in handy for when an organization needs to conduct some external benchmarking and comparison with other rival organizations. Finally, the EFQM excellence model underscores the significance of consensus in the process of assessing an organization’s strengths as well as the specific areas of weakness needing improvement (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development 65).
However, the EFQM excellence model is not without limitations. First, the model is often rather expensive to be used by smaller social organizations notwithstanding that there is an option for ‘scoring’ as well as an Awards Recognition scheme.
Secondly, the model lacks formal mark or accreditation and is not openly recognizable or visible to funders, service users, customers and other stakeholders. In the same vein, it is worth noting that the model was primarily designed for the commercial sector thus some of its language does not translate well to voluntary organizations or social enterprises. This evidenced by the fact that few third sectors organizations have successfully adopted the excellence model such as the Community Enterprise Ltd (CEU Ltd), Thames Reach, and Liverpool Personal Services Society.
Summary
The Dubai Government Excellence Program (DGEP) uses the EFQM institutional excellence model in its organizational excellence categories and Employee excellence categories. The program integrates the EFQM to suit both the environment and culture of the Dubai Government. In addition, the DGEP also integrates the RADAR Logic in assessing participant’s performance which includes about 27 government entities having over 60,000 employees (Porter & Tanner 43). Annually, the program gets an estimated average of 250 submissions for the categories it is concerned with. The net impact of the excellence model has been in form of transforming Dubai government into a world class performer and a benchmark in government excellence (Hiles 96). Dubai government has set best practices in areas of Innovation and Creativity besides attaining customer-focused culture resulting in improved customer satisfaction indexes over the years. In addition, the government has seen increased development & empowerment of its people leading to better standards of living. Finally, the excellence model has resulted in increased awareness on effectiveness and efficiency in government departments and employees.
Conclusion
To this end, therefore, there is no doubt that the European Foundation for Quality Management excellence model working in conjunction with the RADAR Logic can lead to better organizational performance if well adopted and implemented.
References:
UN Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs. (2007). Innovations in Governance in the Middle East, North Africa, and Western Balkans: Making Governments Work Better in the Mediterranean Region. Geneva, United Nations Publications.
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2010). Progress in Public Management in the Middle East and North Africa: Case Studies on Policy Reform. OECD Publishing.
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Kanji. K. G. (2002). Measuring Business Excellence. California: Routledge.
Hakes, C. (2007). The EFQM Excellence Model for Assessing Organizational Performance: A Management Guide. Munich: Van Haren Publishing.
Porter, L. & Tanner, S. (2012). Assessing Business Excellence. California: Routledge.
Stapenhurst, T. (2009). The Benchmarking Book: A How-to-Guide to Best Practice for Managers and Practitioners. California: Routledge.
El-Kahlout, Z. (2010). Dubai Government Excellence Program: A Success Story. Retrieved from: http://meqa.bettermentor.com/mag/q4q/vol1_issue3/pdfs/dubaigovt_excellence.pdf
