Definition of Quality Circles

First let us see what a quality circle is. A group of employees volunteering to meet together and work together for the improvement of the work place or process or any other thing related to the organisation is called as a quality circle. The focus may be on safety of the work place, cleanliness of the work place, improvement of a production process, cutting down the spillage, disposal of waste and so on.

In other words, a group of employees who share a similar idea or responsibility, volunteering to help others or the organisation is a quality circle.

Quality circle concept is introduced by the Japanese, calling it at first as “quality control circles”. Later, this concept is adopted by the world, well received, add their own ideologies, and now, it is a successful method to improve a work place.

The basic idea of Ishikawa, the Japanese author of this concept, is “recognising the values of the worker as a human being, with feelings, knowledge, experience, wisdom and interest towards his activities”.

I think we can understand this concept well with an example. In our school days, teacher used to form groups of students, a mixture of performers, stars and slow learners. Each group will have a leader, who usually will be an enthusiastic and studious person. The leader will help the other students in the group to understand complex maths problems or to understand the theory of physics or just listen to a history question and answer.

Often I have seen that, the leader is not a rank student, but the one who is willing to spare time to help others. Teachers know this quality and select them as group leaders. Only difference in quality circle in organisation is that, here the group is formed volunteerly

The objectives of the concept of Quality circles are

Self- development of the employees

Development of attitude of the employees

Improvement in the organisational culture

Development of team spirit

Recognition of knowledge in all levels of organisational structure

It is interesting, is it not? Accepting all the employees as responsible, knowledgeable, competent to analyse their problems, experienced to come out with solutions and appreciating them for being so. The evolution of HRM has brought us to this extent of thinking from treating workers as slaves to recognising them for just being themselves.

Ok, so, now you would like to know the other features of the quality circles, don’t you?

Let us see one by one

The group has a leader and as assistant leader.

The members meet on regular intervals

The circle will have a common goal for a specific period which may change after the accomplishment of the goal

Usually, the number of members is from 7 to 10, but there are no rules. The group may be small or big, it depends on the need and the focus of the group.

Quality Circle Structure

Quality circle members form the base of the structure of quality circles. The leader on top of them, often assisted by another person, called as assistant leader. A facilitator of higher cadre in management guides and facilitates the meetings. A coordinator on top of facilitator acts like a bridge between the top management, often in this case made as Steering committee to decide upon the suggestions and recommendations made by the quality circles.

Working Nature

The quality circle, meet at regular intervals. They decide on a particular problem to focus on. Then they analyse the problem and finds out ways to solve the problem. Often, they make a presentation to submit to the management, and the management if finds the solution workable, will render their support to the circle to implement their suggestions. But, as I told you earlier, when the focus is something else like safety awareness, then they may have a different agenda like training and assistance programmes to the co-workers to enable them understand the importance of workplace safety.

Objectives

Now, let us see some of the objectives of quality circles.

Increase the performance

Increase the productivity

Improving the morale of the workplace

Improving better communication among the employees, employees and the employer, employees and the superiors

Improving the skills of co-workers

Reducing wastages of materials and resources

Reduction in errors in production process

Safety in workplace

Cleanliness of the workplace

Improving the environment of work place, by reduction of various pollutions

Helping in personal development of employees

Improving cost reduction techniques

The list is never ending. The objectives are often identified at the need arising in the work place; hence, the objective of each quality circle may be different.

Advantages of Quality Circles

As quality circles are volunteer groups, the morale will be high and hence, the performance of the group members is relatively high.

The involvement of employees towards the organisation and the work place gains a sort of bonding and loyalty is visible. This results in retention of employees.

The top management and the employees group thus get a positive communication channel through quality circle and this improves the overall communication in the organisation.

As the problems for the circle is identified by the member themselves, the floor level problems are often solved by the employees themselves, instead of problems to get elevated to the higher levels and awaiting treatment from the top management.

Employees get a sense of responsibility and satisfaction when they solve the problems at their levels.

Employees gets motivated when they get the support from the top management

Problem Areas

Even though by the Management supports the concept of quality circles, often the perception of the problem and solution presented by the members differ. This difference of opinion leads to stagnation of suggestions submitted by the members. When the ideas given by them are not well received by the management, the morale of the Quality Circle goes down.