Our survey says
Today’s quality managers are increasingly being called on to be masters of many different fields, but where exactly have these multi-tasking individuals come from, and how do they feel about their quick-silver industry? New research by Peter Burcher and Gloria Lee reveals what makes today’s quality managers tick
There is always plenty of research available which gives us tangible facts and figures about certification and standards – the ISO annual survey to name just one. But monitoring the general mood of today’s quality managers is a different matter. Based on a postal survey in 2005 of 334 British quality managers, this new research from the Aston Business School acts as a climate gauge for the industry today, getting to the bottom of a range of quality managers’ career experiences, satisfactions, aspirations and development needs.
Just over half the sample entered work straight from school and half of these left school at the minimum age of 16 or lower. Some of these early entrants subsequently studied for post-school qualifications and in the sample as a whole 63 per cent were graduates, nearly half of whom had a higher degree. The main areas of qualification among the quality managers was engineering (53 per cent) with a further 29 per cent qualified in the sciences. Only eight per cent had a recognised quality management qualification. Over a quarter of the sample had taken an apprenticeship, while the next largest group entered engineering, with widely differing first jobs among the rest, eg graduate traineeships, production, quality, finance and design.
Work experience
Few of the quality managers had started out their careers in this area and they brought quite wide-ranging experience from different functions to their current work. The sample varied in terms of the extent of experience in the quality field with half of respondents having only been quality managers for five years or less but 50 per cent had worked in the quality area for 15 or more years.
In their current job as quality managers, the size of their departments also varied considerably. Whereas 49 per cent had two or fewer reportees, five per cent had 20 or more in their department, although departmental size ranged to up to 200 in one case. Eighty per cent of the managers had a formal job description. The types of activities they were responsible for varied, with 64 per cent having one or two other management responsibilities like health and safety (24 per cent) and environmental responsibilities (18 per cent).
The managers were asked what, within their actual quality management role, they considered to be the most important aspects of the job. Improving procedures was the most consistently endorsed area (40 per cent) followed by advice on quality (25 per cent), but a variety of other aspects were also seen as key components of the quality managers’ role.
Over half of the quality managers were given defined targets for making improvements, 62 per cent had defined programmes of work aimed at achieving these targets but only 32 per cent had dedicated staff resources for this activity. There were quite varied areas of responsibility for improvements, eg systems design or organization of work. Turning to financial control for their department, 69 per cent had a separate budget and 58 per cent had control of that budget.
Job satisfaction
Quality managers were asked what aspects of their present job gave them particularly high or low levels of satisfaction and opportunities for innovating. Opportunities for improving efficiency and solving management problems were high sources of satisfaction, whereas dealing with labour difficulties, hours of work and physical working conditions were less satisfying aspects of the job. They were also asked to compare their situation with that of managers of other functional areas in their organization and, while workload, work variety and autonomy were considered to be above average for quality managers compared with others, they rated advancement opportunities and income as less favourable.
Within their job, some quality managers have responsibilities for employees, for example, running employee surveys (42 per cent) annually and meeting a wide variety of employees’ training needs (49 per cent). Employee training covered such areas as skills for specific tasks, environmental issues, quality procedures and employee development. Thirty-nine per cent of the quality managers also undertook customer surveys, on average every nine months.
Other quality tools that they used were brainstorming, control charts/statistical process control and Pareto analysis, but most other tools and techniques were used very infrequently. These findings suggest that the vast majority of the managers surveyed are not using – and indeed may not be aware of – the range of quality tools and techniques available today.
Every day’s a school day
Whether or not the quality managers had experienced higher-education, a large proportion appreciate the opportunities for continuing professional development with 76 per cent having attended external courses and 38 per cent taking internal courses. The most widely attended external courses were in the area of ISO 9000 and management and internal courses were most frequently management and health and safety programmes. They were also asked what courses they would like to take for their present job and any future jobs. For their present jobs they wanted to study business and management, followed by languages, whereas for their future jobs languages were followed by business and management. It is perhaps surprising that so few of the managers were seeking personal development in the area of quality tools and techniques, as even among the graduates very few had degrees specialising in quality.
The study indicates that quality managers have varied educational backgrounds and bring diverse experiences outside the field of quality to their work but they appear to rely on these factors together with ‘on the job’ experience within a quality department to enable them to perform effectively as specialist managers, rather than developing themselves in a wider range of techniques available for their current specialism.
For instance, the range of quality techniques used by the majority is somewhat limited and while three quarters of the managers have attended continuing professional development programmes, these are mainly in the area of one systems standard (ISO 9000) or general management. Also, as only 38 per cent have attended internal courses, this raises the issue of whether organizations are offering sufficiently wide development opportunities for their quality managers in the latest quality tools and techniques. As respondents indicated that in over 70 per cent of cases their organizations have undergone major change in the last two years, it may be that such periods of turmoil have not been conducive to offering training to ensure that their quality managers are at the cutting-edge of their profession. Such oversights at top management level may be reflected in the opinion of over 50 per cent of the quality managers that there is inadequate knowledge of quality issues at board level.
Back to the future
It is also telling that when quality managers were asked how they saw their future in the organization, the biggest proportion indicated ‘no change’ (25 per cent), although the response of a minority was ‘a larger job’ (ten per cent), another five per cent envisaged a move to another company.
Asked about their ideal next career move, 12 per cent said ‘consultancy’, followed by ten per cent saying ‘retirement’ and eight per cent ‘stay the same’ but some others were more ambitious and sought a post as quality director (six per cent) or simply a promotion (four per cent). Such findings suggest that there are a worrying proportion of quality managers working in a non-dynamic career but for some at least, this does not seem to be a source of major dissatisfaction. However, other findings indicate that the majority of the quality managers studied are well satisfied with many aspects of their job and view it favourably in relation to the situation of other managers in their organization.
About the authors
Peter Burcher is senior lecturer in operations management at Aston Business School in Birmingham. For information contact e: p.g.burcher@aston.ac.uk
Gloria Lee is visiting research fellow at Aston Business School. For information contact e: gloriaandnorman@aol.com
About the survey
The majority of the quality managers are men, with 46 women in the whole sample of 334. The age range of the sample varied from 26-70 years old with 49 being the average age for the group.
Fifty seven percent of the managers currently work in manufacturing with the rest in service industries. Their companies vary in size with small and medium sized enterprises well represented as 35 per cent of the companies are made up of from 51 to 250 staff. The headquarters of these companies are predominantly in the UK (62 per cent) with the rest mainly in the US, Canada or continental Europe.
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