I am currently working through a TS gap analysis with my MD. One topic that came up as something we need to determine how we address it, is 6.2.2.4

"The organization shall have a process to measure the extent to which its personnel are aware of the relevance and importance of their activities and how they contribute to the achievement of the quality objectives."

This is an obvious update of the old 1994 ISO requirement that employees were aware of the quality policy. I promoted this by issuing free rulers with our policy emblazoned on them - and also to help with drawing straight lines on SPC charts! (Well I thought it was a neat idea, but its obviously not going to cut the mustard with TS.)

Obviously now, we will need to ensure our employees are made aware of the overall business objectives and their specific quality objectives. That's good practice in my book, but determining how we measure the actual level of awareness is a little trickier.

Other threads have suggested using audits to obtain this information. Do I schedule an annual audit that randomly samples 20 or so employees with "pop quiz" style questions? Work them into existing audit checklists?

"What are the objectives of the business?"

"How does your job affect this?"

"What are the specific objectives for the process \ function you perform?"

"In what ways can you contribute to improving these?"

Would I get any meaningful objective data from this method? I don't really want to waste time and resource gathering subjective data. I've been tasked with finding out how others meet this requirement, so please post your experiences, opinions etc..

Many thanks

Dave.C.
:thanx:

Another method is to document a skill matrix listing all your employees down the left side and all the relevent skills required for that operation or department, and coding for level of competence.
This worked for our TS audits.

Dave, IMO you're going back to the wrong requirement when you go back to the old ISO quality policy requirement. If you check the ISO/TS Implementation Guide published by AIAG, they tie section 6.2.2.4 back to QS-9000 section 4.18.1 - training effectiveness.

As to how we're doing it, we hold annual meetings for the employees, post departmental results versus goals, and have recently started a monthly newsletter of how the organization is doing versus goals.

Still, if I question someone during an internal audit as to what their goals are or how they contribute to meeting our company goals I get some pretty lame responses. Examples are very general and would include responses such as "Do a good job." IMO most of our hourly work force has little awareness of their departmental goals, and has difficulty in identifying in a consistent manner how they help meet the goals. There are exceptions.

I like the questions you came up with for your "quiz" - and may steal some for use in our audits.

During the yearly appraisal review ( with every employee ) we have added attached form for evaluation of employee awareness.

The first time we did this we had very bad results.
We 've changed our approach in communicating to the employees and the next (6months later - to get quicker response to our actions) round had improved results.
Different improvement actions included :
- explaining policy (and what each items means for their job), consequences for the customers if bad parts are shipped.
- explaining external and internal complaints (and how to avoid them)
- explaining objectives (and what they mean for their job)
- involving lots of employees in quality groups.
- ......

Still we have a lot of work to improve.

Best regards,
Antoine

Thanks guys, some food for thought there. The ISO 1994 thing was just an example. We've never had QS though, but we are an ISO9001:2000 organisation and have just passed our three yearly re-certification audit.

We already have the skills matrices in place for all departments, and these are all reviewed every six months. That demonstrates that employees have been through specific training on quality awareness and their role in contributing to the objectives.

Displaying the objectives, employee interviews, publishing newsletters or holding team briefings etc are also good ways of getting the message accross... BUT the part of this clause that concerns me is the part that says:

"The organization shall have a process to measure the extent to which its personnel are aware...etc"

Seems pretty specific to me and goes a step further than the ISO Competence, awareness and training section 6.2.2.d.

Has anyone on here actually implemented a measurement process that satisfies this requirement?

Hi Antoine - thanks for the questionnaire, that looks good and is certainly something I could consider adopting.

Thanks

Dave.

You can use the questionnaire as a measurement tool as well.

I have changed the assessment area to English ( was Flemish ).

Best regards,

Antoine

Thank you once again Antoine.

Best Regards

BUT the part of this clause that concerns me is the part that says:

"The organization shall have a process to measure the extent to which its personnel are aware...etc"

Seems pretty specific to me and goes a step further than the ISO Competence, awareness and training section 6.2.2.d.

Has anyone on here actually implemented a measurement process that satisfies this requirement?

In our Safety and Health activities I believe we have implemented a process that could be easily used for the ISO requirement. We have a 17 question survey asking the workers about their opinions on safety and health issues, and it is given during the mandatory annual employee training. Now, you can opt out of taking the survey, but we get at least a 75% response rate. The survey results are provided monthly to me for analysis, and the results are charted and used as part of our Safety and Health dashboard. The company responses are trended by individual question monthly, and major project groups are analyzed fully quarterly.

The analysis technique is found at http://www.hanford.gov/safety/vpp/survey.htm. I have provided a survey tool developed for an "Enhanced Work Planning" effort at the Department of Energy in a previous thread - Annual Customer Satisfaction Survey - Weighted (valence) survey as a change? (http://elsmar.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=10654).

Please find a questionnaire attchd.
We've counted # of the right answers
& made it an input for the mgmt review.
The auditor accptd it.
The bad thing is that for this year
I'll have to prepare another one... :bonk:

We have some simple questions & try to survey the workforce (no employees/12) per month.

Most shopfloor staff only give a vague answer to be honest, despite having a good induction presentation on it.

Slightly:topic:

6.2.2.4 Employee motivation and empowerment
The organization shall have a process to motivate employees to achieve quality objectives, to make continual improvements, and to create an environment to promote innovation. The process shall include the promotion of quality and technological awareness throughout the whole organization.

The organization shall have a process to measure the extent to which its personnel are aware of the relevance and importance of their activities and how they contribute to the achievement of the quality objectives [see 6.2.2 d)].
Thinking about this clause in the light of the various posts I have suddenly realised that in fact there are a two completely separate requirements here

The clause should read:
6.2.2.4 Employee motivation and empowerment
The organization shall have a process to motivate employees to achieve quality objectives
The organization shall have a process to measure the extent to which its personnel are aware of the relevance and importance of their activities and how they contribute to the achievement of the quality objectives [see 6.2.2 d)]

6.2.2.4.1 (my number) Continual improvement and innovation
The organization shall have a process to make continual improvements, and to create an environment to promote innovation. The process shall include the promotion of quality and technological awareness throughout the whole organization.


There is no requirement to measure the second requirements except for the requirements of 4.1 and is this really one of the processes meant there!!
Why are they together anyone

I just wonder why in the IATF checklist it puts "Measurement of employee satisfaction" as an evidence of satisfying this clause (6.2.2.4). Is there any other implication?

On being encouraged by a high volume of received "thanks" for the Rev. A of the questionnaire, which I've posted quite a while ago: I am now posting the Rev. B of the highly decorated doc. (which imho is also much much better than the ancestor)!!!!:magic:

I was given the responsibility to develop a process to satisfy TS 6.2.2.4 at our company about a year ago. Our employees knew the quality policy and our goals like the back of their hand (thanks to ISO 9001) but we needed to measure their awareness of how important their jobs were in helping us achieve these goals. I adapted a questionare that I "nicked" from one of our helpful Covers. We randomly select employees monthly to do the questionare and chart the results of correct answers. We have shown a steady improving trend over the past 12 months! Our auditor liked the chart but the real kicker was when he actually went out and asked the employees the same questions.... It actually sunk in with the associates! Now that they realize that no matter what their job is out on the floor, they all have important jobs that contribute to us achieving our goals...! We have now started to impliment "Cell" goals so each group knows how well they are doing and we also publish a monthly Newsletter with our Quality Metrics. The real measure I think is how this awareness affects employee pride in producing quality products...!:yes:

Dave:
Still loving your bike.........!!:cool:

Err, back to the post. Why not use your internal audit to measure this? You could use another 'process' and get into all kinds of extra work, but you already have a method in place - audits. Don't forget, they are part of the measurement section of the standard and if you choose to define the scope and criteria as the awareness etc., then go and select a number of people (some reasonable population, some newer recruits, if you have them, new in job etc.) and then ask them those things, almost right out of the standard.

Alex's questionnaire is fine, you might use some of that type of question, but I still recommend just auditing it.......

Andy

Dave:
Still loving your bike.........!!:cool:

Err, back to the post. Why not use your internal audit to measure this? You could use another 'process' and get into all kinds of extra work, but you already have a method in place - audits. Don't forget, they are part of the measurement section of the standard and if you choose to define the scope and criteria as the awareness etc., then go and select a number of people (some reasonable population, some newer recruits, if you have them, new in job etc.) and then ask them those things, almost right out of the standard.

Alex's questionnaire is fine, you might use some of that type of question, but I still recommend just auditing it.......

Andy

Andy,

I agree with you!

I think we should not create unnecessary paperwork at the expense of practicality and effectiveness.

Too bad, the Standard seems to be too indirect to understand, why can't it be simpler?

Sorry, not meant to be offensive, just outspoken, for everyone's benefit!

From the audit findings, auditors could comment that base on the findings, it reflected that the employees are aware of their relevance......and how they contribute....

Any other views?

Thank you and pardon me!