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Think about it!!! | |
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What do the following words all
have in common?
Banana
Assess
Grammar
Dresser
Potato
Revive
Uneven
Answer at the bottom of this column
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Featured Tool
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In conjunction with the introduction of their new
Health and Wellbeing Award, explained in our article to the right, Investors in
People are offering a free health and wellbeing diagnostic tool, Health and Wellbeing Interactive. This has 20 multiple choice questions, only
takes about ten minutes to complete and is aimed at giving you a clear picture
of how well you are currently performing with health and wellbeing. The tool
also features free downloads, templates, case studies and a good practice tips. Use the above link to have a go.
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Did you know?
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That prime numbers (those
numbers that we all learnt about in school, that can only be divided by the
number one and themselves), play a very important part in internet security.
When your computer logs on to a website like Amazon, it receives a very long
number (up to 800 digits), that can only be divided by two smaller, multiple-digit
prime numbers. This very long number is known as the public-key number. It is
used to encrypt data, such as credit card information, so it can be sent to the
website securely.
To encode your credit card number, your computer does a
mathematical calculation using the website's public-key number and your credit
card number.
The clever bit is that to undo the calculation and translate the
code back into your credit card number, you need to know the two prime numbers
that built the public-key number and, so far, no mathematician has devised a
way of breaking such numbers down into their prime divisors. If someone could
do this, they could become a very dangerous hacker indeed!
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| Online Excellence Calculator |
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Do you want to see how your organisation might perform if assessed against the EFQM Excellence model?
There are many types of self assessment available to organisations wishing to use this widely used excellence framework.
By following this link you can experience just one method of assessing your organisation in a short 10 minute matrix based assessment. |
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Think about it!!!
Answer
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If you move the first letter
to the end of the word and then read the word backwards, you end up with the
same word you started with. Can you come up with any more such words?
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| Newsletter Archive |
| To view our previous newsletters in our archive please click the link above |
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If you found this issue interesting and believe a friend or colleague would find the articles useful please click on the button above to send it to them.
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Greetings!
Talking to friends
and colleagues recently whose holiday plans have been threatened by BA strike
action, set me thinking. It is logical to assume that if, in a recession,
people are more worried about losing their jobs, they will also be less likely
to risk doing anything that makes the organisation they work for more economically
vulnerable. Major changes to UK law in the eighties made wildcat strikes and
secondary picketing a thing of the past and from then onwards major strikes in
general have been rare. So why is it that, in the economic climate of the last
year to eighteen months, they seem to be re-emerging, with organisations such
as Royal Mail, BA and local and national government all facing industrial
relations problems?
It seems to me
that hard times tend to polarise attitudes. In organisations with a
collaborative culture, people will pull together and each shoulder their fair
share of hardship and helping to overcome the situation. In those with an "us
and them" culture, people will feel it is the other side's fault - "management are
incompetent", "staff are overpaid and lazy" - so the other side should be the
ones to suffer and bear the responsibility for "getting us out of this mess"; open
confrontation is the inevitable result, leading to a lose/lose situation for
all. So how do we avoid this?
To ensure a
collaborative culture, employees, amongst other things, need to feel that their
organisation has their best interests at heart. Investors in People have just
come up with a new Award that recognises the importance, in terms of
organisational performance, of maximising employee health and wellbeing. Take a
look at the article below or try their new interactive diagnostic tool (our
Featured Tool this issue) and see how well you are doing this area.
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Investors in People
New Health and
Wellbeing Award
Those
of you already familiar with Investors in People (and maybe even those of you
who have not yet explored this people-focused quality standard), will be
interested to know that they have created a new Award, based on the principle
that organisations who wish to get the best possible performance from their workforce
need to maximise their people's health and wellbeing. This is not just about
ensuring people are medically and physically fit and well, but rather encompasses
wellbeing in the wider sense i.e. the "feel good" factor that comes from things
like enjoying your job, feeling appreciated, empathising with what your
organisation is trying to achieve.
It is aimed at helping you link your health and wellbeing activity
more closely to your organisation's overall strategy, maintaining that if you
are clear what you are trying to achieve and how this will be measured, it will
be easier for you to evaluate what impact your health and wellbeing work is
making.
The development of the new Health and Wellbeing Award has been
sponsored by The Department of Health and it has been subject to extensive
piloting with over 400 organisations of all sizes and sectors. It follows the same tried and tested formula as the Investors in
People Standard and, although it does feature some additional criteria,
assessment for it can be done along with assessment for The Standard itself. It
is not necessary to prepare any paperwork or policies or fill out forms to achieve
this award, as there is an interview approach for assessments, involving
consultation with representative groups across an organisation.
Existing holders of Investors in People can engage with the Award as an
additional assessment. They may only need to do the additional Health and
Wellbeing criteria to be able to achieve the Award, as some criteria will have
already been assessed in the standard itself.
People new to Investors
in People can complete the Health and
Wellbeing Award first and use this as a building block towards working with the
main framework, completing the full standard at a later date.
For more detail,
and to try their free diagnostic tool mentioned in our "Featured Tool" article to the left, have a look at the Investors in People website.
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Quality Guru Series
2. W Edwards Deming
In the first of our Quality Guru Series we told you about Taiichi Ohno, who began with a journey to America. This time we talk about W Edwards Deming, an American who journeyed to Japan and whose approach to quality within business there made a major and lasting impact, even after his death. So much so that Japan's most prestigious quality award, the Deming Prize, was established in honour of him in December 1950 and the awards ceremony is broadcast every year on Japanese national television.
Originally a professional statistician, his early experience in this field led him to conclude that quality can be improved only if top management is part of the solution and participates appropriately and actively in the quality program. He placed great importance and responsibility on management, at both the individual and company level. Believing management to be responsible for 94% of quality problems, he developed a fourteen point plan - a complete philosophy of management, that can be applied to small or large organisations in the public, private or service sectors. This sets out what managers need to do to ensure excellence and stay in business and involves constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service, the elimination of mistakes and waste and the need for statistical evidence that quality is built in.
From August 1950, Deming lectured on his statistical and management methods to the leading industrial companies in Japan. His influence was so strong that by December 1950, the Deming Prize had been established. He saw that the top management of the Japanese companies was ready to use his ideas and expressed his confidence that they would come to dominate world markets.
Deming also encouraged a systematic approach to problem solving and promoted the widely known Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) cycle, also known as the Deming cycle, although it was actually developed by a colleague of his, Dr Shewhart.
In 1993, just before he died from cancer, he founded the Dr. W. Edwards Deming Institute, which aims "to foster understanding of The Deming System of Profound Knowledge™ to advance commerce, prosperity and peace." You can follow this link to their website to find out more about the work of the Institution, the man himself and the Deming Prize.
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ley hill solutions aims to be one of Europe's most innovative consultancy organisations specialising in the tools and methods to improve the way your business works and performs. We use internationally recognised standards and frameworks such as ISO9001 and the EFQM Excellence Model to develop solutions that are right for your business.
Please contact us at ley hill solutions if we can be of any assistance.
Sincerely,
Graham Hull
ley hill solutions limited | |
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The information provided in this newsletter and on our website is as correct and up to date as we can make it. no warranty, express or implied, is given regarding its accuracy. We do not accept any liability for errors or omissions. We shall not be liable for any damages (including, without limitation, damage for loss of business or loss of profits) arising from the use of, or inability to use, this site or any information contained it it, or from any action or decision taken as a result of using this site, or any such information. |
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