*Corresponding author. Manchester School of Management, UMIST, P.O. Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK.
Self-assessment using the business excellence model:
A study of practice and process
L. Ritchie, B.G. Dale
*
Manchester School of Management, UMIST, P.O. Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK
Received 7 December 1998; accepted 17 November 1999
Abstract
This paper reports a study of self-assessment practices in 10 organisations. The research was carried out by semi-structured interviews directed towards a range of issues related to the process, practice and management of self-assessment. Amongst the"ndings are that organisations are becoming more aware of the role of self-assessment in in#uencing strategy and are including the outputs of assessment in their business planning process, and self-assessment is seen as making the organisation a more viable commodity. It was also found that the potential of self-assessment for analysing organisational performance and identifying areas for improvement is underestimated by managers. On the other hand, it is pointed out that the increasing commercial aspects of self-assessment and the Quality Award process is diluting their e!ects. Based on the "ndings, two matrices have been developed which de"ne the organisational and TQM related characteristics that an organisation should exhibit before adopting a particular approach to self-assessment. ( 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Self-assessment; Business excellence; Quality awards; Total quality management
1. Introduction
If a process of continuous improvement is to be sustained and its pace increased it is essential that an organisation monitors, using an appropriate performance measurement system, on a regular basis what activities are going well, which have stagnated, what needs to be improved and what is missing. Self-assessment against the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Business Excellence Model [1] provides this type of
framework and is being given a considerable amount of attention by European organisations. There are many de"nitions of self-assessment pro-vided by writers such as Conti [2] and Hillman [3] but an all-embracing de"nition is provided by the EFQM [4]:
Self-assessment is a comprehensive, systematic and regular review of an organisation's activities and results against a model of business excel-lence.
The self-assessment process allows the organisa-tion to discern clearly its strengths and areas in which improvements can be made and culmi-nates in planned improvement actions which are monitored for progress.
Self-assessment implies the use of a model on which to base the evaluation and diagnostics. In addition to the EFQM model there are a number of internationally recognised models, the two being the Deming Application Prize in Japan and the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) in the USA. Although there are some di!erences between the models, they have a number of common elements as themes.
Since the mid-1990s the topic of quality awards and self-assessment has received considerable at-tention from researchers and is well de"ned in the literature (e.g. [2,5}7]). However, the majority of the academic literature has concentrated on the models and comparison of their criteria, and the relationship between award winners and business results, see [8}13].
The "rst major research work in Europe was conducted by co-operation between six European Universities and reported by Van der Wiele [14,15]. Other key pieces of work are Bemowski and Stratton [16], Coulambidou and Dale [17], Gadd et al. [18], Teo and Dale [19], Van der Wiele et al. [20], and Voss and Blackmon [21]. One of the major "ndings from these individual pieces of research is that self-assessment against a Business Excellence Model such as those mentioned above is becoming increasingly recognised as an e!ective business performance management system. Van der Wiele et al. [20] emphasises this point by claiming that if the self-assessment process is not linked with the business cycles of strategic planning, policy, deployment, human resources systems, budget decisions, etc., then it will never become a"t with the day-to-day fabric of management activities.
It is clear from the literature that a number of organisations have adopted self-assessment because it was seen as the thing to do. They have not recognised fully the complexity of the process and the organisational changes needed to ensure it is e!ective. In these organisations it is likely that there will be a lack of motivation, resistance and the improvements will lack impact and eventually self-assessment will"zzle out. There is a limited amount of empirical data on the self-assessment process with respect to issues such as: selecting the assessment approach to re#ect di!erent levels of organisational TQM maturity; the management
planning and resourcing of the process; integrating the outputs from self-assessment with the business planning process and the policy deployment activ-ity; and the negative aspects of self-assessment and how to overcome them. The purpose of the study reported in this paper was to explore the self-assess-ment process of a range of organisations with a view to providing a greater understanding of these types of issues.
The research has been carried out in 10 organisa-tions using semi-structured interviews, supported by analysis of secondary data; details of the organ-isations are given in Table 1. The companies selected for study were identi"ed by the Group Business Quality Director of the organisation sponsoring the research. The primary sources he used were through contacts with the British Qual-ity Foundation (BQF) and various committee work associated with the Business Excellence Model (BEM). All the organisations had implemented TQM and would achieve scores of 400 points or above against the BEM criteria. A total of 25 inter-views were carried out across the 10 organisations probing issues relevant to the self-assessment pro-cess such as: approach used; ease of implementa-tion; resources, management and time involved; preparation for self-assessment; motivational issues; bene"ts/criticisms of self-assessment; and di-rect and indidi-rect e!ects of the process. Each inter-view lasted for up to 3 hours and was interactive, #exible and allowed in-depth discussion and pro-bing of the above type of issues. Attention was paid to veri"cation of information obtained by cross-checking using data question sets. The objective of the study was to develop a model to align organisa-tions with speci"c methods of self-assessment in relation to their level of TQM maturity.
2. Self assessment practices and processes
Table 1
Self-assessment practices!
Company Size Start of
self-assessment
!Approaches to self-assessment}legend: 1. Workshop
2. Pro formas 3. Questionnaires
4. A3 matrix}perception based 5. Award simulation
6. Award submission 7. Blue/Green cards
8. Excellence North West questionnaire 9. Business Driver
10. Report 11. Option Finder 12. Assess questionnaire
13. Others (adaptations of model, e.g. British Gas Matrix Approach).
method. A study of the literature revealed there were 13 claimed approaches, these can readily be grouped into three broad categories: award based approaches, questionnaires and workshops. A brief summary of these three approaches are given in Appendix A; these methods are outlined in detail in the EFQM's Self-Assessment Guidelines for Com-panies [1]. All organisations conducting self-assess-ment have at one stage or another impleself-assess-mented at least one approach or more. It is usually the deci-sion of the organisation itself to determine which approach to start with. Some prefer to`jump in the deep enda and launch straight into a full award simulation exercise (having probably conducted self-assessment workshops for educational pur-poses) * Company A. Others choose to adopt a more incremental approach, by using question-naire-based activities such as The Business Driver or Rapid Assess (e.g. Company B). The
organisa-tions more developed in self-assessment have experienced a number of approaches as demon-strated by companies J and K. It can be seen that the organisations employing a range of approaches are those with higher sta$ng levels. The exception to this is Company E which has used and is using a number of di!erent approaches, not synonymous with their level of sta!and self-assessment experi-ence. This is due to increased activity within this area and the fact that the company has become privatised, and as such is amidst competition for new markets and customers. Company E perceives that self-assessment against the BEM will provide a competitive edge for them and an indication of areas for improvement to be acted upon for the immediate future.
the organisations had moved from employing a simple approach to a more technical one. The organisations were divided on the use of ex-ternal resources, some saying that they had in-volved consultants in either co-ordinating their assessment or in preparing for it, whilst others had not and did foresee this in the future. The majority of organisations will defect to what they perceive to be superior knowledge, and money well spent `in the long runa when approaching a new subject area, and thus purchase the services of con-sultants. For some this is probably a necessary step to provide guidance in order to steer manage-ment in the right direction but for others it is possibly a form of escapism, from full emersion in the process.
The ultimate objective of management is to introduce new measures into the company culture and blend them in with a minimum of e!ort. The same can be said of self-assessment, and its ac-knowledgement as one of the key inputs into the business planning process. Organisations have realised this and are encouraging the use of self-assessment "ndings in directing future business plans. This is evident in the results, with 8 of the 10 organisations stating that their self-assessment results were integrated fully into their business planning processes; Company J stated that this was not the case throughout the whole company, but was becoming so.
The length of the actual co-ordination of the self-assessment process was another area for dis-agreement with wide-ranging and very di!erent opinions, even within business units of the same organisation. On examining Table 1 the consensual opinion was that the process could be carried out in approximately 3 months, however there were some managers who believed the whole process could be done in one month. There was a degree of initial confusion as to how to measure the duration of the process, this being the start of the process by identi-fying leaders, teams and strategy through to the identi"cation of improvement areas and action plans. All the organisations were given the same criteria for this so that their responses would re#ect these areas of activity. The largest process was that undertaken by Company A (9 to 12 months) and the shortest by Companies F and H (1 month).
3. Interpretation of business excellence
Within the companies studied business excel-lence is perceived as being a measure of`how good we areaand a means by which`business can move forwarda. It was also seen as addressing the needs of both stakeholders and internal customers, and allowing the business to meet set goals and objec-tives. Business excellence is considered to be a long-term process, concerned with key strategic issues such as developing core functional processes, to be the best, to get people performing better, and to develop a quality framework in order to provide excellent customer service. The end product of busi-ness excellence is to instil best practice within an organisation in order to support its values and strategic objectives, meet stakeholders expecta-tions, and maintain and exceed its competitive position.
Rather surprisingly only one manager (Company A) related the concept of business excellence to TQM, believing one to be an `extensiona of the other, although managers from other organisations did comment on the`holisticanature of the BEM. Self-assessment should be used by an organisation in conjunction with, and supported by other tools and techniques; this point was not raised by any of those interviewed.
4. Measuring the success of the self-assessment process
The evidence from the interviews indicates that the actual measurement of the self-assessment out-puts has always been problematic, and for some this was a di$cult area to provide a concise response. The views were diversi"ed, however, there was consensual agreement that the self-assess-ment process was successful if the outputs, that is the feedback retrieved, were used in developing strategy and this was also seen as one of the pri-mary indicators of success.
and who was actually using it. It was factors such as these that encouraged the uptake of self-assessment practices and ensured that they were done e$ cient-ly and thereby ensure`successa.
There were managers who suggested that a suc-cessful self-assessment process was one that produced higher scores for the organisation. For another manager the success of the process could be seen by the public image of the organisation. Necessary criteria for a successful self-assessment process according to the "ndings include:
f gaining commitment and support from all levels
of sta!,
f action being taken from previous self-assessments, f awareness of the use of BEM as a measurement
tool,
f incorporation of self-assessment into the
busi-ness planning process,
f not allowing the process to be `added ona to
employees existing workload,
f developing a framework for performance
monitoring.
5. Objectives of self-assessment
Self-assessment is carried out in organisations for a number of reasons, for example, changes in the internal and external environment, changes in leadership and direction, a need to develop quality-based procedures, or as part of a continuous im-provement strategy. An organisation needs to ques-tion why it employs self-assessment, what are the gains, and are they being realistic in their expecta-tions of its output.
One of the outputs of the self-assessment process its impact on the culture of an organisation, in making it more cohesive; co-ordinating a joint working project, involving teamwork, maximum utilisation of resources, working towards a uniform goal and generally making a more productive working unit. The general consensus from the organisations studied was that self-assessment does have a positive e!ect on the corporate culture. The impacts, as stated by the management of Company D, were localised, relating to meeting customers needs, making information more readily available
to both customers and suppliers, and maintaining relations between management and unions.
Some degree of thought was needed in relation to co-ordination of the self-assessment process in or-der to encourage continuous improvement and facilitate cultural change. One obvious di!erence between the internal business functions and ex-ternal organisation was the scale of thinking in-volved. Action concerning self-assessment was generally carried out on a `larger scalea, that is, within those areas which impacted on the overall company direction and purpose. An example of this could be seen by the admission of one manager interviewed (Company J) who stated `that self-assessment was employed in order to drive the organisation to world-class excellencea.
Within Companies A to D there were certain factors that a!ected the initial introduction of self-assessment practices. These included, attempting to improve the continuous improvement process, keeping up-to-date with other departments' pro-gress, and managers recognising the bene"ts and merits of self-assessment, and therefore`bringing it on boarda. Such factors were reiterated by the other organisations examined, however Company E men-tioned that factors contributing to the uptake of self-assessment included the company becoming privatised and Company J a change in direction with the introduction of a new Chief Executive.
Twenty-four out of 25 managers interviewed stated that self-assessment has a de"nite impact on the processes of their organisation, either in monitoring performance or streamlining. Only one organisation (Company G) felt that the self-assess-ment process would not have a de"nite e!ect on their existing processes, in altering them, but the expense involved would not be cost-e!ective. The manager believed that the impact would probably be greater in a!ecting`softeraquality issues.
6. Bene5ts of self-assessment
The bene"ts of the self-assessment process are summarised in Table 2.
Table 2
Bene"ts of the self-assessment process Category Bene"ts
Immediate Facilitates benchmarking Drives continuous improvement
Encourages employee involvement and ownership Provides visibility in direction
Raises understanding and awareness of quality related issues Develops a common approach to improvement across the company Seen as a marketing strategy, raising the pro"le of the organisation Produces`people friendlyabusiness plans
Long-term Keeps costs down Improves business results
Balances long and short-term investments
Provides a disciplined approach to business planning Develops an holistic approach to quality
Increases the ability to meet and exceed customers expectations Maintains a quality image
Provides a link between customers and suppliers. Supporting TQM Helps to refocus employees attention on quality
Provides a`healthcheckaof processes and operations Encourages a focus on processes and not just the end product Encourages improvements in performance
bene"t, and also as a means of supporting TQM, and in facilitating an holistic approach to quality as both as a long-term bene"t and as a means for TQM development. The raising of the organisa-tion's pro"le within the business and wider social community was seen by a manager at Company G to be both an immediate and long-term gain from carrying out self-assessment. A manager at Company K felt that the widespread use of self-assessment meant that a common language could be developed, one that all those involved could relate; this was also seen to be both an immediate and long-term bene"t associated with the use of the BEM. The BEM was also seen by a manager at Company K as `providing a framework for all TQM activities to adhere toa.
7. Di7culties associated with the self-assessment
process
As with all new techniques, there are certain problems that hinder their integration into the
everyday organisational operations. From the in-formation provided, it is clear that there are a num-ber of problematic areas associated with carrying out self-assessment. A summary of these di$culties is given in Table 3.
Table 3
Di$culties experienced with the self-assessment process Di$culties
Lack of commitment and enthusiasm The time consuming nature of the process Not knowing where to start
Selling the concept to the sta!as something other than an`add-onato their existing duties People not realising the need for documented evidence
Lack of resources; time, manpower,"nance
Maintaining the self-assessment skills of the assessors
Lack of cross-functional integration between departments and units Getting the assessment done in time to link it into the business plans
8. Attitudes to self-assessment
When questioned as to whether attitudes to self-assessment had changed, the consensual agreement amongst all the interviewees was that they had altered somewhat since the concept was introduc-ed. It was how they had changed that caused any dissension within this area. In 19 cases the attitude to self-assessment was more positive, in "ve cases there was still some cynicism and in one organisa-tion it was claimed that the attitude was more negative.
There were di!ering views as to why attitudes concerning the self-assessment process within the organisation changed. A number of plausible rea-sons were put forward, for example, people becom-ing more enthused on seebecom-ing the tangible outputs of the process, be it scores or identifying areas for improvement; sta!gaining more awareness of and exposure to the process, and gaining a site visit*it was claimed that the whole concept becomes more
`realawhen this occurs. In one case it was stated that attitudes towards self-assessment become more positive after a certain length of time when it becomes recognised as an integral part of change, and thus people can relate to its bene"ts.
9. Future plans for self-assessment
The majority of organisations undertaking self-assessment analysis have set plans as to why they are employing the concept and `where they are
taking ita; it is clear that there are broadly de"ned future goals in relation to this. The future plans for self-assessment, included:
f application for quality awards,
f using self-assessment to develop process
man-agement and control,
f building self-assessment into business plans, as
a normal practice,
f taking the self-assessment a step further (e.g.
external objective assessment),
f using the self-assessment process as a means of
preparing the organisation for future competi-tion, to make it a more`viable commodityaon the market, and to use it as a `sellinga mecha-nism when approaching customers * there is evidence that in a competitive tendering environ-ment in particular to public authorities, the use of the BEM does act in the favour of organisa-tions.
There is a focus on certain issues, for example, application for quality awards, but there were also discernible di!erences in future activity. To a cer-tain extent there was an obvious focus on the
what they believed was of priority in addressing self-assessment in the future. In general, the actual facilitation/enabling aspect of carrying out the process was not considered an important issue in co-ordinating future self-assessment analysis.
10. A`model approach to self-assessmenta
Based on the"eldwork the extent to which man-agement within an organisation understand the concept of self-assessment and are realistic in the objectives varies considerably and ultimately im-pacts on the "nal outcomes of the assessment. A lack of coherence will lead to uneducated and uninformed decisions being made in relation to the choice of self-assessment approach, the allocation of resources for the assessment and its co-ordina-tion. As such, organisations need to achieve a cer-tain level of understanding in self-assessment, award models and TQM, in order to accurately address the issues evident in the self-assessment process.
The choice of the `besta approach is a di$cult process, one which is no doubt done very much in a`hit or missa capacity by companies addressing self-assessment for the"rst time (and if unsuccess-ful, possibly for their last). Organisations when approaching self-assessment generally experience di$culties from the outset in planning the process and allocating manpower to co-ordinate and drive it. There is usually`blissfulaignorance on the part of management and sta! alike in relation to the aims and goals of the self-assessment process and how it can be used successfully to produce useful results. As a consequence it is likely to lead to di$culties in the management of resources and unrealistic expectations. Organisations can become disillusioned and either abandon their cause, or seek professional advice from external consultants. The"ndings of this research indicate that it is better in the long run if an organisation can totally own its self-assessment process. The use of consultants may be necessary to initiate proceedings but the organisation should maintain control and under-standing of the process.
The formulation of a model which draws atten-tion to a de"ned breakdown in the requisite
organ-isational characteristics of each self-assessment approach can help an organisation, or business unit
`tackleathis area for the"rst time, or even to decide what to do next after they have gained some experi-ence. There is a lack of literature on the `besta
approach to start self-assessment. There is no guid-ance on which approach to actually use. What is of more interest is that companies do not know whether they are best suited to one approach rather than another. There is a lack of advice and guid-ance available to organisations wishing to under-take self-assessment. Organisations need to possess and display certain characteristics if they are to be successful in self-assessment against the BEM. Based on the"ndings of this study, a simple model would help alleviate some of the problems experi-enced by companies in selecting an appropriate approach to self-assessment.
The model proposed, and later described in the paper takes the form of a matrix, examining the characteristics and level of TQM understanding that an organisation should demonstrate before employing any self-assessment approach. The matrix allocates organisational characteristics to speci"c approaches. The pre-requisite character-istics alter depending on the technicality of the approach involved. The ones evident within the matrix are those that an organisation needs to actively pursue and practice in order to successfully adopt self-assessment initiatives.
Fig. 1. Approaches used in the self-assessment process.
they should possess a certain level of TQM experi-ence and development before adopting any self-assessment approach, as identi"ed by the charac-teristics given in Fig. 3. The aim of the matrix is to provide an informed and simple overview of which TQM features organisations should exhibit: to help prevent any errors in judgement when choosing an approach, and provide a mechanism in explaining unrealistic expectations and lack of success. Because the BEM is based on TQM principles it is essential that these principles are practised within an organisation, otherwise it defeats the purpose of adopting the model. The characteristics as identi"ed in Fig. 3 are broad in nature and general, and can be related to all sys-tems and processes within the organisation, for example, the continuous review of processes and systems can be applied to distribution, manufactur-ing, service delivery, customer complaints and customer feedback.
From the information provided in Figs. 2 and 3 it can be seen that the organisational characteristics and TQM features that need to be in place and actively evident in the company are many and diverse (the characteristics outlined are the minimal
requirements for each of the approaches). However, these decrease substantially in quantity as the ap-proach becomes less technical. One factor that needs to be considered is the motivation behind the employment of a speci"c approach. For example, an organisation may be using an approach, such as an A3 matrix, merely as an educational tool to raise awareness of self-assessment practices amongst the sta!. If this is the case, the manager responsible does not necessarily need to have a hands-on work-ing knowledge of the operations of the organisation (although it would be bene"cial). If, however, the aim of the approach is to identify and derive core areas for improvement, then a knowledge of both the self-assessment process, and of the key opera-tions of the organisation is essential.
The quantity of approaches mentioned could easily be reduced in number to fall into three main categories:
f Award applications (e.g. reports, award
simula-tion, award submission).
f Questionnaires (e.g. The Business Driver,
Excel-lence NW Award, Assess, Option Finder).
Fig. 3. TQM related characteristics associated with individual self-assessment approaches.
11. Conclusion
The research "ndings showed mixed levels of understanding and experience of both business
Self-assessment as a process is holistic in nature, and as such will a!ect the whole structure of the organisation. Managers need to plan for self-assess-ment and not just choose to do it on a whim to"ll a void or keep directors satis"ed. This is a short-term solution and will create a plethora of prob-lems. Other organisations were obliged to adopt this management technique in order to gain a com-petitive edge (be it through identifying areas for improvement and acting upon them, raising public awareness as a marketing strategy about the com-pany or preparing for a quality award submission). Some were using self-assessment as a means of co-ordinating and selling quality initiatives or merely to `keep up with the rest of the crowda. Some had a greater incentive than others to carry out the self-assessment, in the sense that it was felt that their resources were adequate whilst others were over-stretched, and some sta!had their per-formance in this area linked to "nancial bonus schemes. As a consequence the results are diversi" -ed, but to a certain extent that is to be expected in relation to the background of the organisations, and the level of exposure to self-assessment and TQM. Related to this is the motivation behind self-assessment and the levels of resources, support and future objectives.
The consensual opinion on self-assessment is that it provides a useful tool for measuring organ-isational performance and identifying areas for im-provement. In doing so it facilitates benchmarking internally and externally, provides a common language between those companies employing self-assessment, and prepares and organisation for future competition.
The self-assessment process, if deployed proper-ly, requires managers and sta!alike to assimilate a high level of knowledge, which to a certain extent, has to be manipulated to suit the operational envi-ronment. The self-assessment process should not necessarily be seen as a technical one, but should not be treated as something simple either. In this respect it deserves as much attention as any other process within the organisation's operations. Man-agement must have the imagination, foresight and capacity to use self-assessment to its full potential, otherwise its use will be restricted. It is clear from this study that some managers can make time
to take the concept more seriously than others. The rest are left with an increased workload and several projects getting minimal attention because they, like self-assessment, are not considered as a priority.
The matrices described in the paper provide a means whereby a company can align itself with speci"ed criteria, from an objective viewpoint (which not all organisations are willing to do), and ascertain if what they are doing is right, and if not, what should they be doing. For a newcomer to the self-assessment process, they should provide some direction of purpose and assist them on their journey.
One of the key "ndings of the study was the change in manager's response to TQM. Over the past number of years the attitude towards TQM has become more negative, people apparently mis-understand the concept, perceive it to be too tech-nical or control oriented, and thus it has gradually developed it into something else, alternatively known as TQ or Business Excellence. There is evidence from the research that managers have adopted certain aspects of the TQM philosophy, but not others, producing a diluted version. Based on this study `Business Excellencea practices ad-vocated today are not the equivalent of TQM, but a more diluted version of the original TQM con-cept. It should also be noted that there is genuine confusion as to what Business Excellence is and what it can do for an organisation.
Another noticeable development is the changing nature of the BEM and the process itself. The model is being increasingly sold on the back of the quality awards and not as a self-assessment man-agement technique and measurement tool to sus-tain continuous improvement practices. It is also being used to attain di!erent goals, such as raising the corporate pro"le within the public arena, instead of identifying areas for improvement. When all is said and done, if a company chooses to employ self-assessment, they can employ it what-ever way they want, as suits them.
and will try to accommodate the customers as much as they can, to ensure customer satisfaction and repeat trade. This has spilled over to a degree in the scoring of the self-assessment analysis. More than one manager interviewed in the course of the research pointed out that e!orts are generally made to present the feedback from the assessment in such a way as to not o!end the customer and to su$ciently motivate them to make sure they will continue conducting self-assessment and ensure re-peat custom. To some extent this can be seen as
`panderingato the client, something which is not acceptable at the level at which self-assessment operates. If this is true, and assessment practices are following in this direction, something needs to be done. The assessors hold a key position in the whole cycle of events linked to the BEM. Once these are out of sync the model will eventually loose credibility.
There is also a degree of complacency developing within the process, possibly due to misunderstand-ing of both business excellence and TQM, or unrealistic expectations of the performance of the model and the organisation in question. This has not been helped by the hype that is attached to the quality awards. This can motivate organisations to adopt the process, but can also channel their e!orts in the wrong direction. Every year companies try to introduce self-assessment practices into their busi-ness functions unsuccessfully; organisations should consider why they are employing the process in the "rst place.
Appendix A
A.1. Award based
This approach, which can create a signi"cant workload for an organisation, involves the writing of a full submission document (up to 75 pp) using the criteria of the chosen quality award model and employing the complete assessment methodology including the involvement of a team of trained assessors (internal) and site visits. The scoring of the application, strengths, and areas for improvement are then reported back and used by the manage-ment team for developing action plans.
Some organisations have modi"ed and de-veloped the criteria of the chosen award model to suit their own particular circumstances, provide more emphasis on areas which are critical to them, make the criteria easier to understand and use, and to reduce some of the e!ort in preparing the ap-plication document. In some cases, a Corporation or Holding Company has set a minimum score which each of its facilities has to achieve within a set time frame. Once an internal award has been achieved, its continuation will require the successful completion of a subsequent assessment, usually within two years after the initial award has been granted.
A.2. Questionnaire type
This is usually used to carry out a quick assess-ment of the organisation's standing in relation to the award model being used. It involves answering a series of questions and statements, which are based on the criteria of the award model being used, using a yes/no format or a graduated response scale.
A matrix chart is sometimes used which involves rating a prepared series of statements, based on the appropriate award model on a scoring scale. The statements are usually contained within a work-book which contains the appropriate instructions. The person(s) carrying out the assessment"nds the statement which is most suited to the organisation and notes the associated score.
A.3. Workshop approach
This is where managers are responsible for gathering the data and presenting the evidence to colleagues at a workshop. The workshop aims to reach a consensus score on the criterion and details of strengths and areas for improvement identi"ed an agreed.
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