While you may often think about the importance of quality control, do you have quality control policies? Many leave it to chance, which makes their businesses vulnerable to gradual changes. These things will likely hurt productivity and your bottom line.
Imagine you visit your favorite restaurant. As the meal progresses, you notice a few things have changed. Your favorite dish doesn’t taste as good, the service is forgetful, and the establishment is rundown.
Faster than you can write a poor Yelp review, you swear off returning to the restaurant. The things you loved about the place have disappeared.
For the restaurant, the issues may be related to a change in managers, servers, or kitchen staff. Over time, people who were really good at their jobs may have moved elsewhere. Unfortunately, their replacements don’t appear to have the same standards or proper training.
The staff may not be responsible for the decline. An owner may be pinching pennies, using lower quality ingredients, and performing less maintenance and cleaning.
As a customer, you don’t know the exact problem but you notice the change for the worst. You’re not interested in hearing excuses.
You may not work in a restaurant but don’t think people won’t notice similar lapses in quality control. If a good employee leaves, does their knowledge of the job go with them?
When new staff have to guess what they should do, they may guess wrong, create an ineffective shortcut, or underestimate the importance of a top priority.
This is why it is so important for employees to have a written guide to policies and procedures. The document should be frequently reviewed, in order to maintain its effectiveness.
Similar attention should be placed on vendor contracts. One provider may offer higher quality at a higher price than the competition. A new employee may switch to a lower cost vendor, not knowing the savings will include a drop in quality.
Keep a record of why you work with certain providers, so the desired service level is maintained.
Some will say, “We just remember that stuff. We don’t need to review it.” Keep in mind that we take lists to the grocery store and put birthdays on calendars. We do these things because it’s easy to forget.
Like a restaurant customer, your business or department will be judged by otherwise preventable mistakes and lapses in quality. While processes can change over time, it should be with improvement in mind and not ignorance of policies.
Quality control requires an ongoing commitment. Otherwise, people will notice the change.
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