EFQM Excellence One

Citation

(2003), "EFQM Excellence One", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 16 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2003.06216aag.001

EFQM Excellence One

EFQM Excellence One - web-1.efqm.org/excellenceone/Keywords: Excellence, EFQM, Learning and improvement

Excellence One is rather different from Web sites we have reviewed previously. It is not just a provider of information, but a comprehensive, interactive, online learning platform for performance excellence. The site is provided by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) to support the new EFQM strategy. This has three strands, recognition and model promotion activities, management practice studies, and networking activities and member services. Excellence One supports the management practice studies strand, by providing access to learning sets, news and other networking opportunities to members and customers of EFQM. It has been developed as a new way for individuals and organisations to access approaches to excellence and be exposed to the latest management practices.

Full use requires a subscription, with individual and corporate rates, discounted if your organisation is a member of EFQM or one of the national partner organisations, but there is sufficient non-paying access for you to judge if it of use to you. Individual subscription provides a tool book with more than 70 day-to-day practical tools, a CD-ROM with an e-learning module on the EFQM Excellence Model, and access to the learning platform for a year.

It is all structured round the EFQM Excellence Model, and provides:

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  Access to a comprehensive set of resources (for example tools, learning sets on management practices and approaches to excellence, insights, and case studies) developed and validated by some of Europe's most respected organisations.

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  Access to the latest ideas and validated practices described by the organisations and people that have implemented them.

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  Interactive opportunities that permit you to build networks with your peers, and put you in contact with people who set the pace in their organisations for achieving excellence.

It has three zones: the Learning Zone, the News Zone and the Networking Zone.

The Learning Zone allows you to access a variety of learning sets, insights, tools and key approaches and practices that will help your organisation to excel. It contains more than 600 pages on key management practices adopted by the best organisations. It includes over 40 insights from European Quality Award winners, prizewinners and finalists described in depth, and provides reviews of current books and Web sites.

The News Zone provides articles on the latest ideas and validated practices, drawing on extensive management expertise and knowledge from the most respected organisations from all over Europe. The articles cover what the best organisations are doing in order to achieve excellence; what management practices are on the agenda of European organisations; news from the winning organisations.

The Networking Zone provides a variety of ways to contact and collaborate with other members:

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  Discussion forums connect you directly to the full Excellence One community where you can interact with peers and experts.

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  Ring of friends is a smaller group of trusted peers where you can raise questions and ask for information and advice, such as who could be a good consultant in a particular area, what software to use, how to apply particular tools or techniques, etc.

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  Virtual communities of practice enable you to explore a topic during a few weeks with other like-minded participants with the support of an experienced practice leader.

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  Requests for benchmarking partners will enable you to find the partner you're looking for to help you progress.

You can use the site just to keep abreast of the latest news, but it is intended to be used for learning and improving your practice. To make best use of the site, the providers suggest that you "use it like a gym facility", visiting at least twice a week, to train your mind in some of the activities. They recommend that you identify your key areas of interest and group them into two categories, the ones you need to focus on in the immediate future to help you achieve your objectives, and the ones you need to monitor which could have an impact on the future of your organisation.

Then for the first category, take the time to identify all the relevant content you can find in Excellence One, select the good practices and the tools you need to implement and learn from how others have done it. Explore other people's experiences, and take the opportunities offered by the discussion forum and the virtual communities of practice to share your concerns, needs and successes.

For the second category, topics you want to monitor, look at the news, the insights from the winning organisation and the case studies. Find out if there are good sources of knowledge in the "Learn more section". Ask your "Ring of friends" if they can help or simply post a request in the discussion forums or in the "Benchmarking partner request facility".

This is a powerful site, with access to a wide range of material. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage: the wealth of material constitutes the widest range of resources devoted to quality and excellence we have found so far on the Internet, but it is easy to get lost in it. You need to keep a clear focus on what you want to find out! However, for those wishing to use the Excellence Model to structure their performance improvement efforts, this site is strongly recommended. It is certainly worth visiting and using the demonstration to see if the site is likely to be of use to you.