WHERE
The social firm CarMen gGmbH (Caritas for persons without a job, CarMen) was established as a company for employment and integration in 2003. Together with its predecessor, “Proju”, which was founded 1984, CarMen looks back to over 20 years experiences in the field of job integration and employment of jobless people.
Easy structured access to relevant information about the organisation
Proju, a project for jobless adolescents, provided projects for job-seekers and social welfare beneficiaries. In 2003, it became insolvent and CarMen was founded by the welfare organisation Caritasverband Koblenz, which is one of the six welfare organisations in Germany. CarMen additionally offers special working occasions called one-euro jobs for unemployed persons who are on supplementary benefit. CarMen employs 15 able-bodied and 15 disabled people, 12 expert trainers, 5 pedagogical workers and 4 trainees in gardening, caretaking and home economics. It also provides training for problematic adolescents.
WHY
Quality management has been introduced quite recently at CarMen. The main topic in the Equal Community Initiative for CarMen has been to establish a quality management system on the basis of the EFQM Excellence Model. CarMen develops quality standards together with the entire staff according to the EFQM criteria in order to improve the organisation’s key competences and economic independence. The performance improvement is based on principles of transparency through team work involving all employees as well as team responsibility. Therefore, the quality management systems need to designed as simple and comprehensible as possible. Everyone should be able to understand these systems.
There was a need to ensure that an EFQM handbook would be available for all main co-operation partners describing CarMen’s quality management processes comprehensibly and understandably by using visual methods. The online handbook would at the same time provide a continuously up-to-date description of the organisation’s quality management system and easy access to the most important documents, quality standards, check lists and other relevant information. The handbook would serve as a document of proof of the company’s quality management for all of its key stakeholders.
HOW
The aim of the handbook is to provide a simple and comprehensible description of the enterprise in accordance with all EFQM criteria to the employees and key stakeholders, such as investors. The handbook contains chapters that are exclusive for employees to show the development transparently. The external stakeholders cannot see this information.
This online handbook is intended for all key stakeholders and co-operation partners of CarMen. It is very well visualised and comes with a mindmapping software tool. With this software the central criteria of the EFQM are visualised and briefly described. Clicking on the appropriate branch, the branch will open and the information is available in HTML or PDF. It is possible to define a protected area for internal communication between the employees of the organisation only. The handbook allows all relevant quality-related data to be stored in one place so that every employee has online access to current quality standards, improvements identified, check lists, concepts, etc.
The development of the handbook is a key task in the Equal project. The handbook is in a test phase in the enterprise. Employees and selected interest groups name areas for improvement, which are included in the handbook. A special task of development is to bring the online version and the printed version up to date. The information, graphs and checklists available on the info portal are in frequent use. After the test phase the handbook will be available to all stakeholder groups.
Changes in the handbook can be made offline, after which the online version can be updated in just a few minutes by the quality manager. Needs for improvement are raised by customers and staff members by means of user interviews and surveys. This handbook structure can be used by any enterprise, only the mindmap software is needed.
Enclosure: Mindmap of the EFQM criteria (PDF)
For more information: CarMen gGmbH, Achim Meis, meis(at)caritas-koblenz.de