Happy World Quality Day

In 1989, on November 9th, the first World Quality Day was organized by the Chartered Quality Institute in London. Since then, the World Quality Day is celebrated annually on the second Thursday in November. But what can you do in a company on a World Quality Day?

The first question is whether you should celebrate World Quality Day or work on your quality. Well, you can combine both. For example, through team building. During team building activities, you can see the substance of the team work and thus ultimately the benefits for the company, as well as team cohesion through joint leisure activities (going for a drink together) after the team building session.

Teambuilding is a part of continuous improvement process focusing on collaboration, alignment, problem-solving competence and communication.

Team building games:

At the beginning of a team building session, the team members should be able to first relax a bit. All people should be motivated to take part. Community games are ideal for this. Through community games you can see how teamwork works in general, for example by observing how quickly you come to a solution together or whether all team members have participated. All of these observations should be evaluated and presented to the team. If the team is large in number, the team can be divided into several groups to promote competition and thus increase the desire to participate.

Problem-solving process:

After the relaxation phase through community games, you can tackle the issues. This is where the organizational or process issues are addressed. How is a department structured, are tasks and responsibilities clearly and fairly divided, how does cooperation and communication work in a team and many other topics. The same should then be considered in relation to the entire company. How is the team integrated in the company, what interfaces are there, how does the cooperation with the other departments work, etc. The management processes should also be considered. Are individual processes well defined in your own department? Are the current processes efficient and satisfactory? Where did things go wrong? At the end of such a session all outcomes should be summarized and improvement actions planned. The action plan should be clearly defined (measures, responsibilities) and timed. It is important to plan the methods used (e.g. brainstorming for suggestions for improvement) as well as the timing in advance.

For this kind of team building a moderator can be appointed internally (from another department e.g.), or an external company, specialized in team building events. I would definitely recommend the second option. Especially if the team building should run over several days and include several disciplines. Regarding location, I would definitely suggest something outside of the company, where you won’t be disturbed or interrupted, indoor or outdoor, depending on the type of team building event.

Together we can do it better:

You can also skip a problem-solving process in a team building event. Just forget about the problems and try to promote team spirit through joint activities. Indoor events such as bowling, cooking together, escape rooms, etc. are suitable for this. If the weather plays along, hiking, going on a city trip or playing paintball are the appropriate ways for team building. Everything which brings people together and having fun, is recommended here.

Continuous improvement:

Team events are intended to promote motivation and cooperation in the company and the team. Because only satisfied and motivated employees can lead a company to its goals. And the ultimate goal of every company should be continuous improvement. You cannot change the world in a day, but you can start.

If you plan to organize a team building event and you are looking for a company who is familiar with both – quality and team building – we can highly recommend our friend Christian Dackau from Nature awakes: https://nature-awakes.at

By Dijaz Maric, Quality Management & Reliability Engineering Consultant