From Customer Satisfaction To

From customer satisfaction to total quality management in the VDAB. The pathway to EFQM – quality management.

Contribution by Mr. Eddy Donders, VDAB, Belgium

Outline

Our purpose is to sketch the path, which has led the VDAB to a sustained quality management. Although client-orientedness has been a dominant value in the VDAB in the last twenty years, the actual challenge is to establish an effective quality system, which is both dynamic and flexible answering the changing needs of our customers.

This concern led to the establishing of a quality strategy and a Quality Department. The Quality Dpt introduced a customer satisfaction index some five years ago. In 2000, the VDAB decided to adopt the EFQM quality model.

VDAB: Flemish Employment & Vocational Training Service

VDAB is one of the three Belgian public employment services. As a vocational training organisation, VDAB is one of the four major public training providers in Flanders and can be compared on a European scale to FAS (Ireland) and IEFP (Portugal). As a public service, the VDAB is committed to a management contract with the Flemish government. This management contract contains quantitative as well as qualitative parameters.

The VDAB vocational training system is organised through a network of VDAB-managed training centres and recognised training centres. All of these are delivering training provision in close cooperation with the social and training funds of the economic branches. VDAB training staff is about 900 instructors, delivering short and long vocational training programmes to more than 137,000 trainees in 2001. Training or retraining unemployed is one of the main missions of the VDAB-training centres. The following pages deal with the vocational training division of the VDAB.

The customer satisfaction index (CSI)

The CSI was first introduced in 1997. In all, the VDAB uses a set of 7 questionnaires, one for each type of service. There are questionnaires for the different customer groups: job seekers, employers and employees.

The CSI for vocational training consists of a questionnaire with a selection of items (16) sent to the customers- trainees one month after their training period. The respondents give a score from one to 10 questions concerning the subject expertise of the instructor-trainer, the course materials, the guidance and follow-up… Scores from 1-6 are considered ‘insufficient’, 7-8: ‘good’ and 9-10: ‘excellent’. The questionnaires are sent back to the Quality Department, which processes and analyses the findings and produces feedback reports. This procedure must guarantee the objectivity of the CSI.

1 The response rate is up to 35- 40% for vocational training (about 2000 respondents over 1 year) and the Jobclub (application training and resume writing).

The questionnaire measures the satisfaction on 6 process elements of training:

- the instructor-trainer (3 items); - the training programme as a whole (3); - the accessibility/availability of the training provision(2); - the planning/ delays between enrolment and actual training (2); - the information on training facilities (2); - the environment of training (canteen, hygiene,...) (4);

Typical questions are: how do you judge (evaluate) the competence of the instructors? What do you think of the course materials and other training resources (computers, machines,…)? What do you think of the catering at the Training Centre, etc?

How good are we?

The Quality Department publishes twice per year the overall customer satisfaction results. The CSI indicates trends of how our clients perceive the quality of our services. The CSI shows global trends; management will pay attention to meaningful fluctuations in the satisfaction index and take action. Results are also available on a regional level.

The highest scores are attained by Jobclub training, courses like assertiveness and personal development for job seekers and vocational (technical) training programmes (more than 80%- scores = good). Our training staff and course materials are on the average considered good to excellent. Detailed figures show for instance that about 60% of our clients perceive our vocational instructors as ‘outstanding’, 30% as ‘good’ and about 10% as ‘insufficient’. We get lower scores on planning (delays), on information on the training programmes and on the environment of training.

The CSI scores must be interpreted with care. On a local level (or on course level) the figures may be misleading; one single incident may have considerable impact on a limited sample of questionnaires. The director of a training centre will use other sources of information (exit interviews, direct observation in classrooms) to get a clear picture of the service quality. He will intervene when in a particular course, satisfaction is low or conflicts are emerging. Proactively, he will make sure that service quality is being delivered by coaching his trainers' team and ensuring the preconditions of training.

And what do we do about it?

On the regional level each training centre will set two quality objectives on the basis of the customers' results and develop an adequate improvement action plan. In one example it will involve a better screening of candidates when ‘drop-out’ rate for a particular section is high. In another example it will mean that the catering or transport problems must be tackled. The planning of the programmes, the conditions of training (accessibility, catering) and the information on the training are recurrent concerns.

2 The mere existence of a quality tool does not restrain the training managers to ensure that the instructors are well-informed and coached, the course materials and equipment are adequate, the non-training staff is briefed about the programmes, etc. In other words management must ensure that the conditions for service quality are met.

The basic principle of a CSI is that the customer is the final arbiter of service quality and that his perception of service quality can be measured. This is still a reactive approach to quality. The challenge is to build a total quality system into the training organisation.

Pathway to the EFQM model

There is a growing pressure on training providers to show ‘proofs’ of their service quality. The changeover to a total quality system was speeded up by the decision of the Flemish public ESF agency to impose a quality label for all organisations involved in the European Social funds. The Agency uses a ‘light’ version of the EFQM model for their audits. In December 2000 the VDAB direction board decided to adopt the EFQM Excellence model as a strategy for total quality management.

EFQM in brief

The EFQM model (stands for European Foundation of Quality Management) was introduced in 1992 and is used by about 20,000 organisations across Europe and its importance and appeal is rapidly growing. Information about this model can be downloaded from the site: www.efqm.org/

EFQM supports a holistic and dynamic model of quality management:

- Holistic: its premises are that excellent results with respect to customers-people- society are achieved through leadership driving policy and strategy, people, partnerships and resources and processes. The model includes not only customer (satisfaction) results, but also society and people (own personnel) results; - Dynamic: through a process of self-assessment, organisations are encouraged to set up improvement plans. The organisations can apply for the European Quality Award. In Flanders the Quality Centres follow a similar path. These not for profit organisations deliver quality certificates ranging from K2C to K2B and K2A. K2A is the ‘summit’ awarded to top excellent organisations.

The EFQM model is based on 9 criteria divided into ‘enablers’ and ‘results’.

Customer results are at the core of the quality concept and account for 20% of the total excellency score. Customer results can be measured through perception measures such as the satisfaction index, but also by performance indicators (such as percentage of job seekers getting a job after training, which is a key performance indicator in the management contract with the government).

3 Apart from the customer focus, the EFQM model relies on some fundamental concepts of quality management: - results orientation (not only customers but all stakeholders including the organisation staff); - leadership and constancy of purpose; - management by processes and facts; - people development and involvement (empowerment); - continuous learning, innovation and improvement; - partnership development; - public responsibility.

In this scope it would lead us too far to go more deeply into the whole model. We refer to the website and the document ‘EFQM–Fundamental concepts’.

The vocational trainer in the quality process

Quality of training is more than the quality of the trainer. However, there is no doubt that the trainer/instructor is at the heart of the EFQM model. As an ‘enabler’, the trainer's competencies have to be developed and sustained and also recognised and rewarded. On the output side, ‘People results’ will show what the organisation is achieving in relation to developing and motivating its staff.

On the level of the Flemish community, a working group is presently examining the competency profile of the adult trainer in the different public training organisations. The project is to set forth a train the trainer programme and a professionalisation plan for adult trainers.

The self-assessment process

When introducing any quality system, the commitment of top management is essential. This is evident in the case of EFQM as the model implies a dedicated leadership and a sustained commitment of the management in establishing and pursuing a quality strategy and achieving results in the different domains (people-customers-society).

Furthermore, the introduction of EFQM supposes that the Quality Department staff is acknowledged with the model and its tools. The Quality Department staff followed a 2 days course to become certified internal EFQM auditors. Moreover, a larger number of the staff in the regional Job Centres were briefed or followed a training.

Self-assessment sessions of 1 ½ day were organised in the 13 regional Job Centres and the Central Office in 2001, including the participation of top and middle management and employees. Systematic group assessment sessions were led by trained process coaches in 31 groups, totalling 300 participants.

In all sessions a standard questionnaire was used. This questionnaire probes the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation on the different criteria of the EFQM model. The participants respond individually and then are encouraged to comment their scores in-group. The group comes to a consensus on the final score on the different criteria.

4 The participants are questioned about their perceptions of leadership, people empowerment, etc. but are also challenged to value the existing objective measurement systems such as surveys of people satisfaction, absenteeism rates,… The self-assessment sessions have at the same time sharpened the awareness and knowledge of what total quality can mean to the organisation.

The results

The session reports containing the scores, the strong and weak points of the assessment and the proposals for improvement were processed by the Quality Dpt. Moreover, each report was discussed in the regional Job Centres and improvement plans were drawn up. At the core, the reports show that the VDAB should invest more in certain areas such as People (Empowerment) and People Results. These findings resulted in 120 action plans on regional and central level, such as actions to improve internal communication (briefing of all employees on core issues), to hold motivation surveys (central level), to improve our human resources development, to set up introduction plans and a coaching system for newcomers, etc. The Quality Dpt introduced a dossier to the certification body of the Flemish Quality Organisation (VCK) and on the basis of the dossier and an audit, the VDAB was eventually awarded the K2C-certificate in May 2002.

Future developments

Getting the K2C-certificate was the first step to the quality excellency; getting the K2B- certificate for the vocational training services will be the next stage. The VDAB must now direct its efforts to implement the quality improvement action plans in the different domains while maintaining its present service quality. This next stage is about transforming the VDAB from a process-oriented into a system- oriented organisation; it will imply that the supporting or facilitating services like administration and HRM must be harmonised with the core business of vocational training.

Total quality management does not stop with getting a certificate; it supposes continuous improvement and development. Development of services: extending the e–Learning services, updating the vocational training curricula, creating a competency passport for life long learning. Development of people: upgrading the training staff, involving people in quality and creating a quality culture in its broadest sense. Development of structures: adapting the organisational structures to the needs of the market. Development of the networks with vocational training providers in Flanders and across Europe.

October 2002