TQM & HRM

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT and HRM

Total quality management (TQM) consists of an organization-wide efforts to make a

continuous improvement in its ability to deliver high-quality products and services to
customers.

Origin: TQM, in the form of statistical quality control, was invented by Walter A.
Shewhart. It was initially implemented at Western Electric Company, in the form
developed by Joseph Juran who had worked there with the method. TQM was
demonstrated on a grand scale by Japanese industry through the intervention of W.
Edwards Deming.

Guideline of total quality management should contain the following items:

 TQM is a customer focused approach

 It is company-wide strategy and involves everyone in the organization
 Aims at satisfying the customer or delighting them
 Provides best quality product and satisfy them in a cost effective maner
 Fundamental changes in basic beliefs and practices
 Prevention of defects is the way and the target is zero defects
 Total quality management is methodical
 Provides meaningful measures of performance that guide the self-
improvement efforts of everyone involved

Principles for the Total Quality Management:

The basic principles for the Total Quality Management (TQM) philosophy of doing
business is to satisfy the customer, satisfy the supplier, and continuously improve the
business processes.

TQM: “Doing the Right Thing, Right the First Time, All the Time; always striving
for Improvement & always satisfying the Customer.

Deming’s 14 Points on Quality Management, a core concept on implementing total

quality management, is a set of management practices to help companies increase
their quality and productivity.

1. Create constancy of purpose for improving products and services.

2. Adopt the new philosophy.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.
4. End the practice of awarding business on price alone; instead, minimize total
cost by working with a single supplier.
5. Improve constantly and forever every process for planning, production and
service.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Adopt and institute leadership.
8. Drive out fear.
9. Break down barriers between staff areas.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce.
11. Eliminate numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for
management.
12. Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship, and eliminate the
annual rating or merit system.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone.
14. Put everybody in the company to work accomplishing the transformation.

14+ Principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) by Joseph

Auciello

1. ADD VALUE TO THE PROCESS: Every action by every employee should

add value to the process or product in every way all the time. Enhance your work by
your actions.
2. DELIVER QUALITY ON TIME ALL THE TIME. Develop a pattern of
delivering perfect products & services on time. Rate your sources by their ability to
do this.
3. BASE BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS ON MUTUAL TRUST and
confidence: Providers and Suppliers build trust and confidence through quality and
deliverability. Customers build it by quick payment and clear lines of communication.
Reliability, Forthrightness, and Honesty are the Basis of forming Business Relations.
4. TRAIN INDIVIDUALS AND TEAMS TO SOLVE PROBLEMS: Teach
Problem -Solving Tools / Techniques & Teaming as the means to solve quality,
safety, productivity, and deliverability problems.
5. EMPOWER EMPLOYEES TO BE RESPONSIBLE for Quality, Safety,
Productivity and Deliverability. Empowering means giving workers responsibility for
their actions affecting their work. Share governance.
6. DEED ‘OWNERSHIP’ OF PROCESS TO EMPLOYEES who have
proven their capability. Reward and reinforce empowerment with Incentives, Job
Security and Equity Sharing. Make employees owners of the process, not attendants.
7. IMPLEMENT THE NEW TECHNOLOGY: Use modern information
resources, INTERNET, databases, telecommunications, applications software, and
project scheduling as tools to improve productivity. Use Statistical Process Control
(SPC) to eliminate errors and defects and continually improve the system
8. COLLECT, MEASURE AND EVALUATE DATA before Making
Decisions. “It never hurts to turn the light on.” Make Decisions based on evidence. “If
you can’t measure it, you can’t evaluate it.”
9. APPLY THE ’80/20′ PRINCIPLE: Use this Problem-Solving Tool to put
problems into ‘Trivial Many’ and ‘Vital Few’ Categories. Record the causes and
frequencies of problems on a Tally Sheet. Develop this into a Pareto Chart which
plots the frequencies (most- to least-important) of the problems. 20% of the causes
create at least 80% of the problems. Importance of resolving vital problems first.
10. DEVELOP ‘WIN-WIN’ SCENARIOS: Create solutions that will benefit all
parties. Cooperation that develops synergism is the best solution.
11. DEVELOP A MASTER PLAN: Good Design Precedes Good
Craftsmanship. A well-designed plan tracks and benchmarks an action through to its
completion. “Quality begins at the Design Level.” (Marty Madigan)
12. PLAN FOR ALL CONTINGENCIES: Prepare for all solutions by
developing alternatives. If necessary, flowchart plans dealing with all possible
alternatives. Apply ‘If-Then-Else’ type of logic to problems.
13. MAKE ZERO DEFECTS AND ACCIDENTS YOUR GOAL: Use the
tools of TQM, SPC, and Problem-Solving to achieve these goals by detecting and
eliminating the causes.
14. QUALIFY YOUR SOURCES AND SUPPLIERS: Use Quality and
Deliverability as the basis for selecting the source of your materials and services.

6 Basic Concepts of TQM:

1. Top management should be aware of current situation and needs to be committed

towards TQM implementation.
2. Focus customer requirements and product/service expectations.
3. Involve employees in understanding the quality aspects and make them
accountable
4. Continuous improvement in the process is required
5. Treat suppliers as your partners
6. Develop tracking mechanism for processes and improve it as per business
requirements

TQM and HRM

Total quality management (TQM) has high impact on human resource management. It
emphasizes self-control, autonomy, and creativity among employees and calls for
greater active cooperation rather than just compliance.

Alignment of HR and Quality: A fruitful cooperation between HRM and TQM can
produce better organizational results. The alignment of HR and quality policies, such
as creating and communicating the TQM vision, preparing the organization and
employees for TQM implementation and generating quality awareness among the
employees across all levels, functions, and departments, should contribute to an
increase company performance.

The success and the progress of an organization is heavily depends on the

combination of HRM, TQM, organizational commitment and the job involvement.
Attraction and retention of the best employees within the organization, increasing job
satisfaction, getting higher level performance from the employees are the most
important tasks in HRM. But to achieve all of these things and to reach to
organizational goals an organization should have employees with organizational
commitment and job involvement and that is possible only when every stakeholder in
the organisation aims for quality in every task that they perform.

Impact of TQM on Human Resource Management

TQM and HR Practice: If an organization experience HR practices with a high

quality, TQM is there. But TQM is not HRM. In simply TQM is the art of managing
the whole to achieve excellence. So when the HRM practices in its maximum level it
is called TQM. Then the organizational commitment and job involvement of
employees are also increase.

TQM and Job Analysis: Usage of TQM techniques on job analysis such as job
design, job enrichment, job enlargement etc to produce job specification and job
description the company gains immense benefits in terms of quality results when
compared to an organisation which does not practice TQM in job analysis. By using
TQM in job analysis efficiency, effectiveness and productivity of employees
increases. It also causes cost minimization, increased health and safety level of
employees resulting to increase in employee satisfaction and quality of work life.
When job satisfaction is high it causes to have high job involvement and
organizational commitment. On the other hand when TQM is not practicing in job
design and job analysis it will cause to lower productivity, employee turnover.
Absenteeism, complains, unionization and resignation

TQM and Talent Resourcing: Placing the right people in the right jobs reduces the
staff turnover rate and the costs involved with constant recruitment. TQM solutions
are very important in attracting the right talent.TQM has an effect on selection
procedures leading to more sophisticated recruitment and selection techniques which
includes psychometric and aptitude tests and assessment centers in an attempt to
identify team workers who are appropriate to a quality culture. Hence TQM has high
impact in talent acquisition ensuring recruitment and allocation of right employee to
the right position.

These TQM based tools are designed to be used by organization to develop quality
people, who make a difference to the business, they measure and give manageable
results on the individuals progress and identify further support and development
opportunities. Organizations which are practicing TQM can be an employer of choice
ensuring high retention rate. Hence the best people join the organization and the
organization selects the most suitable people among them. Job involvement and
organizational commitment of those selected people are in a higher level because they
can work in a pleasant working environment.
TQM and Training: As corporate historian, the HR department should be primarily
responsible for relaying the TQM culture to members of the organization in employee
orientation training. Beyond communicating the TQM philosophy, the specific
training and development needs for making TQM a practical reality must be assessed
and delivered. Training also provides an opportunity to empower and motivate
employees, reducing employee resistance and increases the chances of TQM success.

TQM and Employee Empowerment: Top management commitment and employee

empowerment is one of the most important and vital principle in total quality
management, because it is often assumed to have a strong relationship with customer
satisfaction. In TQM implementation the top management commitment creates an
organizational climate that empowers employees. Thus, this can be achieved with top
management commitment in training employees and giving employees opportunities
to be responsible for the quality of their work. Employee Empowerment in TQM
brings about a flattened organizational chart where there is a shared responsibility
between the managers and the employees.

TQM and Team Work: Team work facilitates job satisfaction and job involvement
and TQM encourages job satisfaction and job involvement. The development of
people and their involvement in improvement of activities both individually and
through teamwork is a key feature in a company’s approach to TQM. A key aspect of
this is making full use of the skills and knowledge of all employees to the benefit of
the individuals and the organization and to create a group culture. The organizations
with TQM practices encourage teamwork from their HR practices where a HR
manager’s role in teamwork is very important.

TQM and Leadership: TQM is a very people oriented technique and it indicates that
the leadership, conducive work culture and positive attitudes of employees as the
major factors that affect the excellence of TQM. Some principles and practices of
TQM may differ among firms and industries, but there is unanimous agreement as to
the importance of leadership by top management in implementing TQM. Such
leadership is a pre-requisite to all strategy and action plans. Those firms that have
succeeded in making total quality work for them have been able to do so because of
strong leadership.

TQM and Strategic HRM: One of the important impacts of TQM, from strategic
HRM perspective, is that it places great emphasis on training. Consistent emphasis on
measurement, maintaining the record of error and mistakes in some companies that
use TQM, training is evaluated with the use of control groups and experimental
designs. In contrast to training, TQM is sharply at odds with conventional human
resource practices in the area of performance evaluation. Traditional performance
evaluation systems are flawed because they are directed toward the individual instead
of a team. Such systems focus on assigning blames for past mistakes instead of
pointing out the direction for the future and may even detract from teamwork. Despite
these differences, most of the concepts of TQM are very much applicable in HRM
 and if used in systematic and well-planned manners can result in good product and
service quality and organizational growth.

Total Quality HR Policy

The quality aspect if required to be incorporated in the culture of the organisation,

then it should be included in the HR policy of the organisation.  The HR policy should
reflect the emphasis of quality in every responsibility being carried out in the
organisation. HR Policy strongly supports the actions to advance vastly improved
transparency, quality and cost containment in the organisation.

A total quality HR policy must be dedicated at all levels of its operations, to provide
quality services that meets the initial and on-going needs and expectations of the
employees and customers through continuous improvement of all operations ensuring
continued success of the organisation.

For example the Nestle HR Policy includes the following which depicts the emphasis
of quality:

 “The prime responsibility of the HR managers and their staff is to contribute

actively to the quality of HR management throughout the organisation by proposing
adequate policies, ensuring their consistent application and coherent implementation
with fairness. They are supposed to provide professional support in handling people
matters but should not substitute themselves to the responsible manager.”
 “Each new member joining Nestlé is to become a participant in developing a
sustainable quality culture which implies a commitment to the organisation, a sense
for continuous improvement and leaves no place for complacency.”
 “The quality of communication in the organisation is an essential part of the
dialogue that each manager will have with her/his employee’s matters”
 The superiors are in a key position in the implementation of the Human
Resources Policy and the development of personnel competence. Continuous inputs
are made in the quality of the work of the superiors and their competence.
 Encourage the personnel to renew the work community and to constantly
improve the quality of operation.
 Quality people make quality organisations, and that’s why our business is
based on expert and motivated personnel.