One of the fundamental pillars of ISO certification is continuous improvement: the concept of continually assessing and improving internal processes, policies and procedures to ensure your organization is the best it can be.
Implementing a continuous improvement strategy is the easiest way to ensure your company’s commitment to continuous improvement. If you are intentional and strategic about your continuous improvement, it will benefit your organization far more than simply leaving it to chance.
Definition of continuous improvement
Continuous improvement in business refers to the process of continually assessing and improving internal processes, policies and procedures to ensure your organization is the best it can be. The easiest way to ensure your company’s commitment to continuous improvement is to implement a continuous improvement strategy.
Embracing the continuous improvement cycle
The point about improving your organization is that this will never happen. Just as a city is constantly able to repair, demolish, rebuild and upgrade, so too do your organization’s policies, procedures and processes.
A continuous improvement cycle moves an organization through the phases of improvement in an endless loop. Think of it as an upward spiral: each time the cycle starts again, you are higher than before.
This continuous improvement cycle diagram shows the phases of continuous improvement that leadership must go through to ensure it keeps pace with the changing needs of the organization.
benefits of creating a continuous improvement process
- Improved Collaboration – A continuous improvement strategy ensures that your business is always striving to be the best it can be. It can also help improve communication and collaboration within your organization by providing everyone with a centralized hub and framework for communicating improvement ideas.
- Identify problems before they happen. By proactively assessing and improving internal processes, you can identify areas where your business may be falling short and take steps to correct them before they become a serious problem.
- Consistent improvement across the company. A continuous improvement process allows every department and branch of your organization to work under the same framework, ensuring consistent improvement across the board.
- Improved leadership engagement. A continuous improvement process pushes your leadership teams to improve. Part of the ISO ethos of continuous improvement is a top-down approach where leadership teams take ownership of improvement processes and are responsible for ensuring that all employees participate in improving the company’s policies, processes and procedures.
- Keep your team motivated. Employees will feel empowered and more motivated to perform at their best when they know their input is constantly solicited and valued. A continuous improvement process will implement measures to facilitate employee collaboration and communication, such as incident reporting and regular meetings with senior management, giving employees greater ownership of the organization’s improvements.
- Improved product or service quality. Embracing the continuous improvement methodology ensures constant improvement of your products or services. This allows you to proactively identify areas for improvement and deliver a higher quality product to your customers.
- Improved customer satisfaction. A continuous improvement strategy can help increase customer satisfaction by anticipating customer needs and ensuring they are always met. A continuous improvement process can include collecting customer feedback to ensure a constant cycle of improvement and better customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Improved efficiency. A continuous improvement process can help you identify and eliminate inefficient areas within your business, minimizing your environmental impact and reducing costs.
- Stay informed about new challenges. Stay relevant and stay ahead by continuously improving your processes. If you wait to improve your business until you’re already falling behind, you’ll struggle to update your processes. A proactive approach to innovation ensures you stay ahead of the competition.
- Create a culture of excellence. Implementing a your improvement process can help create a culture of excellence within your organization. Employees will feel motivated to continue striving for better results, leading to an internal culture and an external reputation for excellence.