Boss, stop using \"poor quality awareness among employees\" as an excuse!

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Is it the employees’ problem that they lack a sense of quality? How to improve effectively? In our daily quality management, we often use reasons such as \"employees lacking a strong quality awareness\" or \"employees having poor quality awareness\" to explain the quality issues that arise. To some extent, the issue of employees’ quality awareness seems to have become an excuse for us to analyze and solve problems. So what is the truth? Today, let’s discuss the issue of employees’ quality awareness. Quality awareness is the manifestation of quality philosophy in employees' minds, including understanding of quality, attitude toward quality, and relevant quality knowledge. Quality awareness plays a role in controlling quality-related behaviors; it is a form of superego consciousness. 1. Quality awareness requires enhanced quality education. By quality awareness, we mean the recognition and understanding of the quality attributes of things. Everything has mass properties, which can only be understood through practical activities that involve coming into contact with that thing. Generally speaking, people first come into contact with the quantitative attributes of things, such as their size and quantity, before they may become aware of their qualitative attributes. Quality is perhaps more difficult to grasp than quantity. Generally, quantity may be a phenomenon of things, while quality may relate to the essence of things. To understand the essence of things, it is often impossible to do so without going through a difficult process. Therefore, the cognitive process related to quality may be longer and more difficult than that related to quantity. From this perspective, the understanding of quality needs to be strengthened through education and training. For employees, it may be insufficient to rely solely on their spontaneous, blind, and unguided practical efforts in order for them to understand the product’s quality characteristics and the importance of quality. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen quality education and training for employees. 2. Attitude toward quality: Understanding quality is the foundation for developing an attitude toward it, and this is also the most crucial aspect of quality awareness. Quality awareness is the foundation for developing a quality attitude, but merely having quality awareness does not necessarily lead to a strong commitment to quality, nor does it necessarily result in emotional attachment to quality. In other words, awareness of quality yet cannot serve to control people’s quality-related behaviors. It has been proven that the key factor restricting improvements in product quality is often not technology, but rather outdated quality concepts and attitudes toward quality. In the 1980s, General Motors in the United States established the Satan division, a newly created brand with the highest level of technology and fully automated production processes, to manufacture a range of vehicles in order to achieve top-quality products and optimal efficiency; however, it was found that the Satan division was not significantly better than the other divisions. This shows the difference in quality concepts between Japanese and American companies. Different attitudes yield different results. In the United States, there is an auto parts supplier that uses the same production line to supply components to both an American automobile company and a Japanese company operating in the U.S. This company employs control charts for process quality control, and it was found that the range of quality variations in the products manufactured for the Japanese company was significantly smaller than that in the products produced for the American company. Similar situations occur frequently around us; whenever products are manufactured for foreign customers or key clients, every aspect of the production process is refined to ensure stability in quality, and everyone strives to prevent any quality issues from arising ； For domestic customers, the products are different; quality control is not that strict. There are many minor quality issues, and major quality problems also occur frequently. Overall, the attitude towards quality seems to be rather lax. The underlying reason for the examples above is that company employees genuinely believe that Japanese companies, as well as those in other countries, have strict quality requirements; therefore, they do not dare to be careless, work diligently, and maintain focus, which illustrates the importance of quality awareness and attitude. 3. How much do you know about quality knowledge? With more knowledge, it is easier to understand things, and one’s beliefs regarding quality become stronger. Quality knowledge includes knowledge about product quality, quality management, quality-related laws and regulations, and so on. Generally speaking, the richer one’s knowledge of quality, the easier it is to understand quality, and the more firmly one can hold beliefs regarding it. Rich quality knowledge can also enhance employees’ quality capabilities, thereby giving them a sense of achievement and strengthening their commitment to quality. It can be said that quality knowledge is the foundation and prerequisite for the development of employees’ quality awareness; however, the amount of quality knowledge and the strength of quality awareness are not necessarily proportional to each other. Why do we always emphasize employees’ quality awareness when quality problems arise? This is because if employees have a deep understanding of the importance of product quality – especially as it relates to their own interests – and hold a positive attitude toward quality work, they will be willing to participate in quality management and pay attention to the quality of their work ； On the contrary, a lack of quality awareness and an improper attitude will lead to aversion toward quality management activities, neglect of work quality, and frequent errors in work. Practice has shown that employees with a strong quality awareness are highly motivated to learn, learn quickly, and learn well ； On the contrary, employees with a poor sense of quality often face difficulties in learning, fail to learn well, and cannot retain information. Consciousness and attitudes also act as a \"filter\" for information, and this effect is even reflected in practical operations. Misreading data during operations is often also related to quality awareness. There is a poor quality awareness, and insufficient attention is paid to relevant quality requirements, which leads to misjudgments. Employees with a strong quality awareness are not only sensitive to relevant quality requirements but also pay close attention to them. Employees with a strong quality awareness place importance on quality and adopt a positive attitude toward quality-related tasks. When taking on new assignments, they consider the quality aspects of those tasks carefully, and they prioritize quality at all times while carrying out those tasks, regardless of whether their supervisors have emphasized quality or not. On the contrary, employees with a poor sense of quality feel aversion at the mere mention of quality; no matter how much their managers emphasize it, it is difficult for them to prioritize quality. Employees with a strong quality awareness tend to have a positive attitude toward quality; they not only actively participate in quality improvement efforts but also experience positive emotions, feel happy, and are more likely to develop a sense of achievement ； On the contrary, if employees lack a sense of quality, their attitude toward quality will be negative, leading them to feel that everything is wrong, or to become irritable, annoyed, or angry ； Or anger, pain, anxiety. It can be seen from this that it is not unfounded for us to use the low quality awareness of our employees as an explanation for the quality issues that arise. In fact, the lack of quality awareness among employees is not entirely their fault; the key lies in our quality training and education. The purpose of quality education is to foster the formation, consolidation, and development of employees’ quality awareness. Of course, the quality education referred to here is in a broad sense; it includes not only holding classes and providing various types of training, but more importantly, educating employees subtly through quality-related activities on a regular basis. Our quality training and education should not be a mere formality; it should not be limited to managers alone, nor should it consist only of theoretical doctrines. Instead, it should benefit all employees, combining theory with practice in order to enhance their quality awareness and improve their quality skills. Everyone has a sense of self-respect and a desire to learn and improve. But these days, whenever there are opportunities for training, a considerable number of employees are not very enthusiastic; they regard quality education as a burden, or they are physically present but mentally absent, failing to achieve the goals of such education. That method of forcing employees to attend training through punishment is even less effective; it’s merely a last resort for us. I believe that to boost employees’ enthusiasm for learning and enhance their quality awareness, it is first necessary to provide them with education on the purpose of learning. In quality education, it is necessary to help employees fully understand the significance of learning in improving product quality as well as in enhancing their own quality awareness and skills. By making them realize that the content of their learning is closely related to their work and highly valuable, their motivation to learn will increase significantly. Secondly, in teaching, it is important to study the content, forms, and methods of quality education in order to stimulate employees’ interest in learning and enable them to achieve spiritual satisfaction through learning. Again, it is also necessary to appropriately use incentives such as rewards and punishments, competitions, and exams to stimulate employees’ motivation to learn. In this way, we achieve our goal of quality education: employees’ awareness of quality improves, their ability to control quality increases, and as a result, the quality of our products is guaranteed. In summary, the issue of employees’ quality awareness is the root of all our quality problems and also the bottleneck to improving our quality. We still have a long way to go in terms of improving employees’ awareness of quality.