Quality Management System & HR

Two days back during the HR Sangam meeting we discussed 'Quality Management System in HR'.
The meeting was facilitated by C Eashwer from Enhance Chennai . One question which might arise in the minds of many while reading this post is 'How HR and Quality management are related???'.

Quality management is a 'participative process' of 'empowering people' to continuously improve the quality of their work.

I would like to believe that it's HR more than any other function which has the responsibility to
'empower people' and help them to be 'participative'.

So that's where HR and QMS meets.

However, the meeting was about how QMS can be implemented in HR. So it's not only about HR playing a key role as a function in Quality Management but also recognizing QMS's role as a function in HR.

I was given a 20 point detailed action plan on establishing a QMS in HR Department. Let me try & outline the points in brief:

• Form a Steering Committee of members from HR department to assist establishing & maintaining a Quality Management System.
• Select and appointment a Quality Management Representative[QMR] for designing, developing, establishing and maintaining a QMS relevent to the Company's business objectives.
• Arrange for a QMS launch evening, to publicize the Quality Management System.
• Plan for regular Steering committee meeting with QMR for the strategic planning of QMS in HR department.
• Arrange for a detailed orientation on QMS to all the steering committee members.
  
• QMR to draw the collective wisdom from the steering committee members and design a Quality Policy for HR department.
• As a next step QMR and the steering committee in consultantation with all the HR staff should design and draft Quality Objectives which are nothing but measurable, tangible, verifiable targets to achieve in the major divisions of HR like recruitment, training etc.
• Now the steering committee should contemplate and come out with a list of 'Quality Activities' in sequence that is from the first HR activity till the last HR activity.
• Next is the design and development of the Business Process Plan[BPP] of HR. This is nothing but a Flow Chart of A-Z activities of the department with connectivity from one to another.
• From the BPP, context diagrams for each division of HR can be made.
• Now the team should contemplate and group and identify the quality procedures from the BPP and context diagrams and come out with a list of Quality Procedures for the department.
• Upon identifying the list of procedures, the team should start writing the procedures. Each process must have a procedure owner who is responsible for the effective implementation of that procedure.
• Formation of Steering sub committees like internal communication committee, ,procedure walk throgh committee, documentation committee etc.
• Now all procedures must be recorded into a manual called 'Quality manual'.
• Other addition to QM is Quality Work Instructions for each procedure.
• Have the internal quality audit.
• Form the Management review committee for active involvement of management staff in supporting QMS in all respects.
• Effective maintenance of QMS.

The bullet points above serve only as a very broad outline of action plan on establishing a QMS in HR Department.