Baldrige Award Winning Quality, 18th Edition

Chapter

10

I  C

 W F ()

236

BALDRIGE AWARD WINNING QUALITY

O   W F C

The fth category in the 2013/2014 Baldrige criteria is dened as follows:

The workforce Focus category asks how your organization assesses workforce capability

and capacity needs and builds a workforce environment conducive to high performance.

The category also asks how your organization engages, manages, and develops your

workforce to utilize its full potential in alignment with your organization’s overall

mission, strategy, and action plans. (p. 18)

This category is divided into two Examination Items:

5.1 Workforce Environment (45 points)

5.2 Workforce Engagement (40 points)

This category examines how you select, develop, and motivate the employees and other

members of your workforce in order to achieve high performance. As with other Baldrige

categories that ask about your approaches, there is not a single preferred approach.

Rather, the examiners are expecting that your human resource (HR) processes match

your culture, size and type of organization. What is important is that your systems for

managing people are logical, efcient, and based on an analysis of real needs, rather

than tradition. It is important that you demonstrate how your HR processes have

been designed to drive the right behavior from your people, and encourage them to

consistently achieve high levels of performance.

Innovation may help improve your score, if you demonstrate novel approaches to job

design, feedback, or training, but is certainly not necessary. An organization with very

traditional HR processes may end up with a high score, if it can show the logic behind

the approach, and that the HR processes have been evaluated and improved many times

over the last few years. Evidence of teams, empowerment, and other trappings of TQM

programs of the past is certainly no longer a requirement, but may still be a plus if the

organization nds these approaches effective.

The pages that follow include detailed explanations of how to interpret the individual Areas

to Address and questions in this category. As before, the information on the overall item is

found in a shadowed box and the explanation of the Areas to Address appears in another

box below that. In some cases, there is a separate explanation of individual subpoints [e.g.,

5.2a(1)] when this is the best way of presenting the material. Following each explanation of

the Areas to Address and subpoints, there is a list of indicators of what the examiners might

expect to see when evaluating your response to this Area to Address. As in the previous

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INTERPRETING THE CRITERIA FOR WORKFORCE FOCUS (5)

chapter, these indicators are not requirements, or a checklist, but simply suggestions of the

type of performance an examiner might see in a company that received a high score.

5.1 WORKFORCE ENVIRONMENT: HOW DO

YOU BUILD AN EFFECTIVE AND SUPPORTIVE

WORKFORCE ENVIRONMENT? (40 PTS.)

Describe how you manage workforce capability and capacity to accomplish your

organization’s work. Describe how you maintain a supportive and secure work

climate.

A. WORKFORCE CAPABILITY AND CAPACITY

(1) capability and capacity how do you assess your workforce capability and

capacity needs, including the skills, competencies, certications, and

stafng levels you need?

NOTES 5.1

“Workforce” refers to the people actively involved in accomplishing your organization’s

work. It includes permanent, temporary, and part-time personnel, as well as any contract

employees you supervise. It includes team leaders, supervisors, and managers at all

levels. People supervised by a contractor should be addressed in categories 2 and

6 as part of your larger work system strategy and your internal work processes. For

organizations that also rely on volunteers, “workforce” includes these volunteers.

5.1a. “Workforce capability” refers to your organization’s ability to carry

out its work processes through its people’s knowledge, skills, abilities,

and competencies. Capability may include the ability to build and sustain

relationships with customers; innovate and transition to new technologies;

develop new products, services, and work processes; and meet changing

business, market, and regulatory demands. “Workforce capacity” refers to

your organization’s ability to ensure sufcient stafng levels to carry out its

work processes and successfully deliver products to customers, including

the ability to meet seasonal or varying demand levels.

5.1a. Your assessment of workforce capability and capacity needs should

consider not only current needs but also future requirements based on the

strategic objectives and action plans you identify in category 2.