Many researches and practical observations have proven the positive impact of the EFQM Excellence Model implementation in organisations both in private and public sector. A great success story from public administration sector is the Swiss Post – ESPRIX Award Winner in 2007, thus receiving the highest national level award in Switzerland among qualitative service providers.

Swiss Post, as a public service provider, holds a significant level of social responsibility, which generates a permanent necessity to verify and improve all their services. To ensure a continuous improvement Swiss Post has been carrying out internal self-assessments and assessments by external experts already since 2001. Results gathered from EFQM-based assessment have been used as a source for continuous improvement.

Over the years, Swiss Post met challenges caused by changes in customer behaviour and a decrease of direct sales. The Department of Post offices and Sales being responsible for Post office management has been focusing on customer needs and productivity improvement since 2001. In addition, the mentioned Department supports the internal self-assessment teams and experts during external assessments based on EFQM Excellence Model.

Swiss Post is proud of its management team that has agreed to accept the challenge of being a transparent and modern organisation. Most of the Post office and sales management department staff has received EFQM an Assessor training, thus ensuring the continuous improvement also during every-day processes.

Excellence Implementation

Meter Mauer, Business Excellence manager at Swiss Post, has been one of the most active supporters of EFQM Excellence Model approach. He underlines that the strongest characteristic of EFQM Excellence Model is in its flexibility of application. “We have convinced our management by indicating that even we lose some levels of freedom, we gain much more. The Excellence Model implementation was a great experience in Swiss Post. Since 2006 we have been carrying regular self-assessments every year, and we adjust our approach and learn from the results each time. Regular internal assessments and measurements ensure operative management and continuous improvement.”

The self-assessment process was supported by the GOA-WorkBench® software. Meter Mauer indicates that GOA was the only tool which completely responded to all their requirements as it had a multi-language support, easy survey adapting function, and a user-friendliness that ensures there is no necessity for expensive and long training sessions for people involved in the self-assessment. Additionally, the results can be analysed and viewed immediately after the self-assessment and surveys have been answered – there are no more long hours spent on data gathering and analysis.

Achievements and continuous improvement

GOA-WorkBench® supports continuous improvement process with its specific improvement-planning module Balanced Q-Card that allows prioritising and administrating the improvement ideas in detail. Thus, the management received a clear list of the most urgent issues that should be solved. Additionally, the Post was supported by a personal consultant from the GOA distribution network who advised them about all the questions that emerged.