European Excellence Model: Criteria and Assessment
Item 14: The European Excellence Model
1. Enablers
Leadership
Leadership is defined by how managers guide the organization toward total quality. Subcriteria include:
- Developing the mission, vision, values, and a reference model for a culture of excellence.
- Demonstrating personal commitment to developing, implementing, and continuously improving the organization’s management system.
- Engaging with customers, partners, and societal representatives.
- Motivating, supporting, and recognizing staff.
People Management
People management refers to how the company develops its employees’ full potential for continuous business improvement. This involves:
- Planning, managing, and improving human resources.
- Identifying, developing, and maintaining staff knowledge and skills.
- Assigning personal responsibility and granting authority.
- Facilitating interaction between the organization and its staff.
- Recognizing, rewarding, and caring for staff.
Policy and Strategy
Policy and strategy encompass how the company integrates total quality into policy and strategy formulation, communication, implementation, review, and improvement. The company must demonstrate that its policies and strategies:
- Are based on present and future stakeholder needs and expectations.
- Are informed by performance measurement, research, learning, and creativity.
- Are developed, reviewed, and updated.
- Are deployed through a system of key processes.
- Are communicated and implemented effectively.
- Form the basis of the company’s plans.
- Are communicated to staff.
- Are periodically reviewed and improved.
Partnerships and Resources
This refers to how the company efficiently manages its external partners and internal resources, including:
- External collaborators.
- Finances.
- Buildings, equipment, and materials.
- Technology.
- Information and knowledge.
Processes
“Process” refers to identifying, reviewing, and correcting processes to ensure continuous improvement across all organizational activities. The company must demonstrate how it:
- Designs and manages processes consistently.
- Improves processes.
- Designs and develops products and services.
- Manages the production, distribution, and service of products and services.
- Manages customer relationships.
2. Results
Customer Results
This refers to the organization’s achievements regarding its customers. Sub-criteria include:
- Perception measures: Customer perceptions of the company’s products or services.
- Performance indicators: Objective measures of results delivered to clients.
Societal Results
This refers to the organization’s impact on its social environment at local, national, and international levels. Sub-criteria include:
- Perception measures: Societal perceptions of the company, local employment levels, and active involvement in community activities and global resource preservation.
- Performance indicators: Objective measures of societal results.
Key Results
This refers to the organization’s performance relative to its planned objectives, both financial and non-financial. This includes:
- Key performance results of the organization.
- Key indicators of organizational performance.
3. Self-Assessment
Self-assessment is a comprehensive, systematic, and regular review of a company’s activities and results compared to a business excellence model, in this case, the European Excellence Model.
Self-assessment helps companies identify strengths and areas for improvement, culminating in an action plan for improvement and progress monitoring. The assessment considers the following for each criterion and sub-criterion:
Enablers
- Approach
- Deployment
- Evaluation and Review
Results
- Trend
- Range
- Comparison
- Target