VOLUME 34 NUMBER 7
1992
Achieving Quality Standards
for Open Learning: BS 5750
at Wolsey Hall
Peter Newell
BS 5750, devised 13 years ago for manufacturing
industry, is rapidly becoming a touch-stone for
quality in any kind of organization. And rightly
so. In this article I hope to try to spell out what
BS 5750 is about, how we are implementing it
and what it means to our organization. Wolsey
Hall has for many years developed and offered
distance learning courses for mature people in
many parts of the world. Today we specialize in
the fields of management development and
professional law and banking. Our aim is to
combine academic excellence with the most
effective means of presentation and delivery.
THE MEANING OF BS 5750
BS 5750 accreditation means quite simply that an
organization has the systems and procedures in
place to enable it to deliver its promises to its
customers. Procedures need to be clearly defined
and in writing; each person in the organization
must have immediate access to the procedures
which are relevant to his/her job; each person
must be able to show an assessment team that
he/she can understand and implement the
procedures and, where possible, contribute to
them. The latter is particularly important.
Systems and procedures need to be "owned" and
therefore in large measure developed by the
people who use them daily. Only then are
procedures likely to be both appropriate and
effective.
"Customers" are not only those to whom we
ship goods or provide a service; they are internal
to an organization as well as external to it. There
is no organization, except the sole trader, which is
Education + Training, Vol. 34 No. 7,1992, pp. 33-34.
© MCB University Press, 0040-0912.
33
not dependent on other internal staff and/or other
internal departments for delivering quality. Each
department of an organization has to deliver
quality to other departments for the whole to
deliver quality to external customers. Clearly it
makes no sense for the one department to take an
order and promise delivery which it knows is
outside the capacity of the production area. It is
vital therefore that all parts of an organization
have a clear understanding of what they can
expect from the others, and a well defined system
in place for ensuring that those expectations are
regularly met. That is what BS 5750 is about.
A CASE STUDY IN IMPLEMENTING BS 5750
We started to develop a Total Quality
Management policy three years ago. We held a
number of staff workshops and made some
useful, if uneven, progress. It became
increasingly clear that we needed to introduce
ideas which were more clearly customer-focused,
more tangible and more measurable. We thought
that BS 5750 might provide a strong platform on
which quality could be built into the organization.
Our first step in September 1990 was to seek a
consultant. Be warned, the language of BS 5750
is generic. Without experience of BS 5750 it is
hard to understand and work with the language.
In my judgement a good consultant is crucial and
will save hours and days of time. Good sources of
consultants are the BS 5750 accrediting
organizations (there are about 12 now, including
Bureau Veritas (BVQI), with whom we work).
At the first meeting with the consultant we
discussed the business with her in depth, showed
her its workings and introduced her to the staff.
On the second, she spent time with each function
within the business (except Marketing and
 EDUCATION
+ TRAINING
Accounts at this stage - since they are not
formally part of the BS 5750 process). We felt
that it was important that she have as clear and as
detailed an understanding of the whole as quickly
as possible. This was achieved comfortably in
two days; naturally this time-period would be
longer for a more complex business (we employ
25 full-time staff in-house and about 220 part-
time, outside staff).
The next objective was for the consultant, on
the basis of her voluminous notes, to draw up an
outline for the BS 5750 manual. The manual
consists of two sections. The first section, on
policy, defines terms and lays down, in outline,
how the business operates and the control systems
(such as review meetings and internal audits)
which need to be in place to ensure conformance
with the BS 5750 standards. The second section,
on procedures, describes systematically and in
detail the outline procedures for each part of the
business.
Four full days were spent with the consultant,
once her first draft had been prepared, working
and reworking both sections, based on our more
intimate knowledge of how things worked. It was
now May/June 1991 and we were 80 per cent of
the way towards having a manual which met both
our own procedures and BS 5750 standards. It was
now time to involve the rest of the internal staff,
which we did, starting in June 1991 with a half
day workshop to explain in detail the objectives of
BS 5750, what would be required of them and to
run through with them the manual in outline.
We then held mini-workshops with the staff
from separate areas of the business, seeking their
guidance and advice on how the manual of policies
and procedures could be made more precisely to
conform with reality; also to work together on
ideas for how things could be done better and more
consistently. How in other words could we
improve procedures and so quality standards?
By this time we had agreed a date with BVQI
for assessment in December 1991. The die was
cast. During the next months, prior to December,
our consultant, whom we had now appointed our
internal auditor for BS 5750, spent two audit days
with us, checking both the consistency of the
manual with BS 5750 standards and also the
extent to which staff were observing it. Both
audits resulted in significant changes to
procedures and to the manual. It is critical to
understand that "the manual" is never cast in
stone. If it is to reflect the dynamics of an
organization, it must and will change regularly,
not least in response to the constant small
improvements which are being made by everyone.
34
Another point of importance is to realize that
no organization is ever perfect - and certainly not
by the time of first assessment for BS 5750. What
is important for the assessing bodies is that
dynamic systems and controls should be in place
in the organization, which will lead to improved
quality of performance over time. I believe that it
will take a minimum of three years for us really to
be delivering the sort of quality we would like,
consistently and throughout the organization.
BS 5750 does not end with accreditation. It
begins then; accreditation is simply the tip of the
iceberg.
WHAT DOES BS 5750 MEAN 12 MONTHS
ON?
It means first and foremost that there is a steadily
increasing understanding of and commitment to
quality by everyone within the organization. We
do not seek major and dramatic improvements in
what we do; rather we seek, daily, little changes,
improvements and development, which will
together, over time, be highly significant.
Having got a basic system in place and
working, we can now focus on those internal
areas (marketing and accounts) which are not part
of the BS 5750 specification; and we can focus
too on our large number of off-site staff, tutors,
authors, editors, DTP staff, proofreaders, whose
effectiveness is also critical to our success.
There are also our partners (we work closely
with Oxford Brookes University [formerly
Oxford Polytechnic], Middlesex University and
Oxford College of Further Education). We are
working with them on quality improvements so
far as their work impinges on our jointly
delivered programmes.
And then there are our external customers.
Because we are much clearer about our own
internal procedures, we are much better able to
tailor our programmes effectively to meet their
requirements. We can as well be very specific
about what is required of them internally to
deliver on their side of any contractual
arrangement between us.
Did I say that we would deliver improved
quality in three years...? But, as the Chinese say,
"Long journey begin with small step..." I believe
we are on the way.
Peter Newell is Chairman, Wolsey Hall, Oxford,
UK, offering distance learning courses in
Management Development, Professional Law and
Banking.