Quality management is crucial in medical device development. It can be the difference between a well-designed product that is guaranteed to work every time and one that could potentially endanger a patient’s health.
Having a quality management system in place helps to ensure every individual in your organisation is working to the same regulatory standards and quality. As with any system, gathering regular feedback from the people using it is an important way to make improvements and make sure it’s fit for purpose.
For today’s World Quality Day 2020, run by the Chartered Quality Institute, we thought we’d share four ideas for helping engage your colleagues in quality management:
Set the backdrop
For any quality management system to work, you need to make sure everyone understands its purpose and why it is important. If your company is anything like Team Consulting, you probably have many bright and creative individuals just raring to get stuck into their next challenge. Offering some dedicated time and training for people to reflect on and learn about different regulations and standards can help them better understand the importance of ensuring quality.
Making this training available to both new starters and company veterans alike can be a great way to encourage some useful sharing of ideas and suggestions too.
Listen to them
You know your quality team are always on hand to listen to suggestions and make improvements, but does everyone else at your company? It’s important to offer regular opportunities for your colleagues to give feedback, and make sure you advertise them frequently.
We’ve found that virtual or face-to-face drop-in sessions based around different themes and questions can be a great way for colleagues to set aside some time and engage. These have been especially helpful during COVID times, as it can be all too easy for people to focus only on their immediate jobs and miss out on the chance to engage.
Make them part of the decision-making process
Another effective way to encourage engagement with your quality team is to get people involved in the decision-making process. Setting up working groups and giving people an active voice can help them to appreciate the importance of an efficient quality management system, while allowing them to directly affect positive change on their work. Make sure you keep your colleagues informed of how you are progressing their ideas too, as this can be a real motivator to continue contributing.
Engage your senior team
This should be an obvious one, however it’s important to show that your management team are actively engaged in your quality management system and have a full understanding of its principles. Having a quality champion at the head of each of your teams can help show the business the priority and impact of quality.
We hope these four ideas will help you to foster some quality engagement with your colleagues.
