WHERE
The Finnish EQUAL Development Partnership Response (2004–2007) was managed by the Finnish Red Cross. The goal of the project was to support social enterprises and organisations operating in a similar manner in their efforts of better reaching their set business and social objectives, and to enhance the employability of those in the weakest labour market situation. The main priorities of the project were 1) to develop a performance improvement model for social enterprises and other organisations operating in a similar manner based on organisational self-assessments applying the EFQM Excellence Model, 2) to develop a tool for demonstration of social results using the method of social accounting, 3) to promote diversity in the workplace, creation of paths to the open labour market and volunteering, and to 4) enhance recycling and to come up with new ideas for using recycled materials, especially textiles.
Organisational self-assessment can encourage greater commitment and common understanding
The national project partners were the Finnish Red Cross (FRC, co-ordinator), Excellence Finland, Ruralia Institute of University of Helsinki, and the S Group. The partners developing their operations were all units with a social mission and operating in a similar manner as social enterprises: the Kontti Recycling Department Store Chain (FRC), Logistics and Sorting Centre (FRC), Meriko project/Meriko factory of the Merikoski Vocational Training Centre, Omaoksa laundry co-operative, Social Janitor project (FRC), House of Skills (FRC), and Uusix Workshops of the City of Helsinki Social Services Department. These units offer their staff a possibility to increase their capabilities in order to help become employed or to continue to some other meaningful goal after supported employment.
WHY
Social enterprises and organisations operating in a similar manner have lacked a systematic method for assessing and continuously improving their operations and results. This was developed in the Response project under the lead of Excellence Finland by using the EFQM Excellence Model. The EFQM Model was chosen because is the most widely used organisational framework in Europe and based on the characteristics of organisations that have shown to been successful. There is evidence that the Model has worked well in identification of areas for improvement. In Finland the tool has been applied to organisations in the private and public sector and also to some extent in the third sector. The model provides a common frame of reference and language between for-profit organisations and social entrepreneurship, and creates a good basis for discussion in transnational co-operation.
HOW
One of the main priorities in the Response project was to develop a method of self-assessment and continuous improvement for the partner organisations. In Response self-assessments were conducted in 13 partner organisations employing people encountering barriers to enter the labour market. At the time of writing this, the assessments had been performed twice during the project, in autumn 2005 and 2006, and a third round was been planned to be realised in 2007. In total, about 100 persons were involved in both of the assessments, 40 % of them were employed through public measures or in work experience placement and 10 % were volunteer workers.
The aim is that self-assessment will become an established approach in the organisations as part of their continuous improvement of operations.
The self-assessment is carried out as a directed conversation in a team of 5 to 10 people on an annual basis. Most of the team members are persons employed through public measures for periods of 6 to 12 months, which means that the setup changes each year. Also others than group members can participate in carrying out the actions to improve performance.
The self-assessment process can be divided in the following main stages:
- Getting prepared to self-assessment
- Self-assessment, definition and prioritisation of improvement actions
- Planning and realisation of improvement actions
- Follow-up of improvement actions
Getting prepared to self-assessment
For each organisation, a person responsible for self-assessment has been appointed, generally the unit manager. These persons have participated in Excellence Finland’s two-days’ self-assessment training. Their role in the self-assessment is to choose the self-assessment team members, plan the assessment process together with the facilitator of the session, inform the staff about the self-assessment, and keep the background material used in the self-assessment up to date. As leaders they are also responsible for the implementation of the actions agreed. During the Response project, the self-assessment sessions have been facilitated by regional co-ordinators of the project, who have also attended the same self-assessment training.
At least a month before the self-assessment session, the person responsible will decide on the members of the self-assessment team. The team consists of management, employees in expert positions, persons employed through public measures and possibly also volunteer workers. The size of the team is 5-10 people. Team members should have worked in the unit long enough to understand its current situation, and possess suitable personal characteristics. The person responsible will inform the rest of the personnel about the setup of the team.
Approximately 3 to 4 weeks before the session, the person responsible will hold an hour’s staff info about the objectives and implementation of the coming self-assessment session. The information meeting is also used as a means to activate all staff members to participate in discussion on performance improvement. During the info, at least one strength of the organisation and one need for improvement is collected from each staff member. The results will be displayed, for example, in the staff coffee room.
Two weeks before the session, the self-assessment team will get training about the background and implementation of the self-assessment. Each team member will also receive a general organisation description so that they will all share the same basic facts. In the three-hour training session the following topics are studied:
- Purpose of the self-assessment and its relation to organisational development
- Mission, values and strategy of the organisation against which the operations and results will be examined
- The RADAR logic of the EFQM model and criteria for assessing the operating models and results
- EFQM assessment areas, discussion to understand their contents
- How the self-assessment is conducted in practice
The participants also get a material package with a one-page presentation of each EFQM assessment area which will allow them to think about the organisation’s strengths and areas for improvement beforehand. The recommendation is that the pre-work would be done in pairs of two to enhance learning.
Self-assessment, definition and prioritisation of improvement actions
The self-assessment session that produces the organisation’s strengths and areas for improvement takes one day. An additional half-a-day session is needed on the following day to organise the improvement actions into larger entities and to prioritise them. The whole process can also be implemented in one day, depending on the need of discussion.
The mission, values and operating principles of the organisation are displayed on the wall during the self-assessment session. The aim is to assess throughout the session how these “big things” are realised in the organisation’s operations and results.
The nine criteria of the EFQM Model describing the enablers and results are discussed in the order laid down in the agenda prepared for the session. The self-assessment team can make use of the subcriteria, but since the organisations are still in the early stages of applying the Model, these have not been evaluated separately. The strengths and needs for improvement are produced by a group discussion and recorded in a table – using a form prepared for this purpose – and shown by data projector so that all team members can see them, for example:
EFQM criterion: 4. Partnerships and resources
Strength: “Monthly co-operation meetings are held with the local employment office”
Area for improvement: “The employees do not have access to the Internet”
The working method in the self-assessment session is as follows:
Each EFQM criterion is discussed as long as essential things are raised up. Generally the session is began from criterion 3, People. By starting from an area familiar to everybody, it is easier to achieve a feeling of success and the continuation will be smoother. The manager or someone else, if so agreed, can present the operating models or measurements currently in use in the organisation. So, the assessment is based both on facts and on each member’s own experience of the organisation’s operations. Discussion on each criterion can be initiated by a pair conversation on each person’s views. After that each team member in turn will present one point, either a strength or an area for improvement. A joint discussion will follow to find out whether everybody agrees on that point. If a consensus agreement is reached, the facilitator will add the point to the table. When no more points are presented, the facilitator summarises the findings. The discussion is moved to the next assessment area.
After the self-assessment session, there will be dozens of comments on strengths and areas for improvement. The facilitator will print out the comments with large enough font size and cut them into separate pieces (size _ of office paper sheet). A method in which comments have been written directly to self-stick notes has also been used.
Next day all the comments are hung on a big wall in no particular order. The self-assessment team will arrange the notes in groups silently so that related comments are grouped together. In this way, comments representing different EFQM criteria (such as Partnership & Resources, Processes, Customers results) can form mixed groups. To end this exercise, the team members will name each group by a title describing the development action (e.g. Improvement of work atmosphere).
Next the team will define 2 to 5 prioritisation criteria generally based on the unit’s values and mission (e.g.”enhancement of path building to the labour market”, etc.). The suggested development actions are put into order of priority against these criteria. Different techniques can be used. To conclude, the facilitator will summarise the development projects that have been created and their order of priority. The outcome of the self-assessment is discussed together. Finally, the self-assessment process itself is assessed by using the previously described strength/area for improvement approach and related techniques.
The facilitator will assemble a concise report, which includes information on how the self-assessment was conducted, the organisation’s strengths by criteria, the development projects in order of priority, the prioritisation criteria and the evaluation of the self-assessment process. The report will be distributed to the self-assessment team and other key persons.
The person responsible for self-assessment will add the most important strengths of the organisation as good practices to the EFQM descriptions.
Planning and realisation of improvement actions
As a continuation to the second day of self-assessment, some organisations have arranged an additional meeting to agree on single development measures that should be implemented immediately. Actions, responsibilities and time schedules will be agreed in this meeting.
For those development projects that were deemed most important a separate planning meeting will be held to agree on the objectives, desired outcomes, tasks, distribution of tasks, time schedules and follow-up procedure. It is recommended that the entire self-assessment team take part in this meeting. These projects will also be included in the organisation’s action plan. According to experience, it is wise to focus the energy and limited resources on just a few actions. Otherwise it is unlikely that real advancement will be made.
The agreed actions and responsibilities for their implementation are usually added to the relevant part of the self-assessment report. After these insertions, the self-assessment report is redistributed to the self-assessment team as well as to key persons. It is important to inform the staff about the agreed actions and discuss them in staff meetings.
The development plans will be implemented by the persons or teams appointed responsible.
Follow-up of improvement actions
The procedure for follow-up will be agreed in connection to the action planning. Normally this involves agreement of follow-up dates when the self-assessment team or some other team will meet to evaluate the situation. In the follow-up meetings, the realisation of the actions, their impact, and the necessary further actions are discussed.
The unit’s person responsible for self-assessments is in charge of the overall implementation of development actions and their monitoring. Key development actions are reported in the annual review.
Experiences
At the end of each self-assessment session, the team members’ feedback has been collected. The strengths of the method have been:
- Enhances co-operation and informs about the operation
- Provides a possibility to employee participation
- Brings up the essential problems in a comprehensive way
- Is a useful method which creates improvements
- Forces people to stop for a moment and motivates them into in development work
The weaknesses have been:
- Difficult terms and language
- How the model fits in the unit’s activities, complexity of the model
- Use of time, timetable, need to make it shorter
- The employees may find some of the criteria distant
- The setup of the assessment team
As a further challenge, self-assessment is still seen as a separate exercise, not as part of the management system, and the development actions are easily focusing on the small easy-to-fix improvements, since there is not enough motivation or time for more comprehensive development work.
In the Response project, continuous improvements have been made in the method of self-assessment. The following presents some of the improvements and experiences of them:
1. Transferring the facilitation of the self-assessment to the organisations
The aim in the Response project was that in the second self-assessment realised during the project, the organisations’ own responsible persons would act as facilitators together with a project team member, and that in the future the responsiblity for facilitation would be transferred totally to the organisations themselves. Based on the project’s experience, however, it is not sensible to combine the role of manager and facilitator. This is partly because the manager has limited possibilities to prepare for the self-assessment and carry out the process, but mainly because it is difficult to act in the role of facilitator and self-assessment team member at the same time; it is important for the manager to be an active member in the assessment session. A solution can be to try to find some other development-oriented person from the organisation who would be interested to act as facilitator. The project partners were not keen on the idea of a pool or network of facilitators allowing persons to facilitate sessions outside their own organisation.
2. Difficult language and concepts
In the Response partner organisations, people in supported employment and also the permanent personnel in charge of operative tasks are not usually familiar with the concepts of the EFQM Model. This leads not only to problems of understanding but also to uncertainty of which issues can be raised up for discussion in the self-assessment session. Solutions can be, for example:
- The facilitator gives practical examples from working life or personal life.
- Rephrasing the EFQM Model criteria and subcriteria into everyday language, which has been done in the Response project. This means also that it will be easier to evaluate the organisation’s operations against the set criteria – in the first phase the focus of self-assessments was more on identifying each member’s experiences of strengths and weaknesses.
- Writing brief descriptions of good practice in use in the organisation for each criteria. Although compiling the descriptions requires a lot of work, they speed up the evaluation and help focus on the essential. This is important especially if the setup of the assessment team changes every year.
3. Viewing the self-assessment as part of the management system
Towards the end of the Response project, the partners’ perception of the self-assessment as an integral part of the management system and their commitment to continuous improvement are being strengthened by means of strategic training. The approach is interactive and each organisation will draw up an action plan based on its own strategic objectives and incorporating the methods used for assessment. The credibility of the training is ensured by top expertise of Excellence Finland.
Transferability
Self-assessment and continuous improvement can be taken into use in any organisation. The EFQM Model can be applied to all sectors, also to voluntary activities and operations of non-governmental organisations. It is recommended to start applying the method flexibly by means of a workshop in which the strengths and needs for improvement are identified together. When starting to use the method for the first time, support of advisors/consultants is recommended.
For more information:
Pekka Saukkola, Finnish Red Cross, Response project, tel. +358 40 589 6547, pekka.saukkola(at)redcross.fi
Heikki Niemi, Excellence Finland, tel. +358 40 536 6001, heikki.niemi(at)laatukeskus.fi