Quality Management through the EFQM Model
Introduction
Organizations use different management strategies including EFQM to achieve their objectives, such as including productivity through proper problem-solving techniques. EFQM enables organizations to achieve their aims through continuous assessment of their frameworks in the success path. Companies face numerous challenges in their efforts to increase productivity and return on investment. Consequently, they must deploy diverse techniques to enable them to achieve the set objectives, and EFQM is one of the mainly adopted approaches. Any company can apply EFQM despite its structure, size, and industry. Therefore, the method has proven to provide valuable results that leaders rely on when making corporate decisions.
Managers use it to improve business’ performance because it is a non-prescriptive technique that assesses the available strategies. Despite its efficiency, the framework has several challenges that might limit its effectiveness and require proper scrutiny to ensure it is maximum utilization.
Challenges Leaders Face
Although leaders use the EFQM model to improve organizational performance, it has limitations such as lack of a strategy for businesses to implement in identifying consumers and markets. EFQM method is also an audit tool for evaluating existing strategies that it doesn’t perform properly. Leaders that implement EFQM in their managerial processes lack the right model to use because the framework does not have a stipulated strategy to follow. Instead, it evaluates the processor forming a strategy that is a limitation for leaders with no quality skills in forming the right technique for achieving success. For example, for a marketing manager struggling in market identification and consumer targeting, the framework is a limitation because it cannot offer the right guidance. A leader must, therefore, use another framework to identify the markets, which might be tedious if he or she lacks the right personnel for the task. The second challenge is that the model acts as an auditing tool and relies on other methods that leaders have already implemented, which it assesses to determine their effectiveness. Hence, the technique does not perform a proper analysis, which requires leaders to use other methods to complete the audits, which are a challenge for leaders.
Recommendations
The first recommendation is that a leader must first identify a proper strategy before deploying the EFQM model. The model is ideal for assessing an existing framework and, therefore, for the managers to overcome the limitation, they can implement a strategy for identifying consumers and the right market first and then use EFQM for assessment. The action will reduce the stress caused by the lack of an approach and enhance the choices the leaders make by identifying loopholes. EFQM is an effective tool for revealing a company’s challenges based on its objectives, and so leaders should understand that first before application. Secondly, since the framework is ideal for auditing and requires additional methods to analyze a business’s performance properly, leaders should identify the right tools based on their organizational setup to increase the model’s effectiveness. Instead of using it to identify the right way to conduct business, they should use it exclusively for auditing and also employ experts who will help verify the best methods to incorporate for an in-depth analysis. EFQM is a quality assessment technique, but without proper utilization, a leader might encounter numerous challenges that might limit its effectiveness. Therefore, before implementation leaders should have frameworks in place and also other methods necessary to increase EFQM’s efficiency.
