Excellence Implementation

In deference to the top-down/bottom-up approach, Mr. Hausmann decided not to take an active part in realisation of the improvement activities. To his understanding, the Excellence approach should be initiated and started by himself as a top-down approach, but the selection of activities and implementation of improvement projects should follow a bottom-up approach.

This chosen approach requires following certain rules:

1. Management is motivated for Excellence and understands why and where it wants to improve the organisation. All the stakeholders are aware and understand the main objectives, and even better, agree on a common strategy to reach this goal.

2. There is a responsible person assigned for monitoring the excellence approach implementation, and the person is aware of the expected results. In addition, the person possesses strong knowledge on the methodological level, too.

3. There is a clear structure of organisation, and before the first self-assessment session there has been established at least one assessor team with shared responsibilities.

4. There is a responsible person (e.g. quality manager, excellence manager or similar) who is the internal contact person that may be contacted in case any methodological support is required. The person must either be in management position or in its direct subordination.

5. Finally, there must be made an agreement regarding deadlines for short-term and long-term activities to be taken.

The top-down phase also includes all steps needed to implement and rund the bottom-up phase, such as e.g. establishing and training management groups on the use of Excellence  methods and tools as well as in their practical application.

Once all the involved people were informed about the approaches to be taken and had learned about the Excellence theory, the self-assessment was carried out with the help of the GOA-WorkBench® software solution. After consolidating the self-assessment results were, all involved employees had an opportunity to participate in the prioritisation of improvement suggestions. In addition to the self-assessment, an employee survey was carried out and the received suggestions for improvement were included in the prioritisation process.

Achievements and continuous improvement
Christian Hausmann considers that the EFQM Excellence Model provides a great background structure for all the processes in the agency:

“GOA-WorkBench® ensures an easy, structured and logical support for the Excellence implementation. The software saves time and human resources on process administration and analysis. Nevertheless, having additional support from an external expert on the use of the Excellence Model can be a great help for the whole process. Having started to implement Excellence in our Agency, we now are considered the leading National Agency in Lichtenstein to take great care of your citizens and the services provided. We are proud to receive this kind of feedback both from our clients and our employees – almost all public servants expressed a willingness to work at the AVW.”