Excellence in education and training

Dxt to the healthcare sector, education is the sector that most frequently relies on the EFQM Excellence Model for quality management systems and leadership models. At both the SAQ and the Esprix Excellence Suisse Foundation, the number of participating organisations from the education sector from 2013 to 2015 is around 25 %. At the SAQ, for example, a total of 27 education companies have successfully followed the EFQM path between 2013 and 2015. And this year alone, three organisations from the continuing education sector were among the five finalists for the ESPRIX Swiss Award for Excellence.

EFQM Excellence Model is particularly suitable for education providers
If you want to count on state subsidies as an education provider in Switzerland, you have to be able to prove that you have quality management. This has been ensured since 2000 by the eduQua label. Many educational institutions choose EFQM as their quality management system. There are several reasons for this. On the one hand, the model allows a holistic view of how organisations operate. It is based on a self-assessment and an external assessment, which can be used to determine the maturity of an organisation. Arguments that also seem to convince the Quality Management Commission of the Rectors' Conference of the Swiss Universities of Applied Sciences. According to Markus Hodel, Rector of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, it came to the conclusion "that the

EFQM Excellence Model is a suitable basis for the continuous improvement process in educational institutions with complex and also decentralised structures". On the other hand, the individual market participants can compare themselves well with each other - EFQM offers a "competitive element" for this, as is well known, in contrast to quality standards according to ISO, for example. "Through the EFQM Excellence Model, education providers can show that they are both teaching and learning organisations," explains Siegfried Schmidt of SAQ. "The Excellence approach offers the company not only the opportunity to evaluate the current state, but to develop further with a view to the future."

Practical experience
One of the many training service providers that have committed themselves to the EFQM Excellence Model is Digicomp Academy AG. The company offers courses and seminars of all kinds for corporate training in companies. Last year, Digicomp received the R4E 4 Star recognition from the SAQ. CEO and owner Peter Kupper is convinced by the model. "It is balanced and helps to illuminate blind spots about qualified issues." Since the company started working with EFQM, he says it has been able to mirror all shades of the business model via holism. "We have become more mature as a company overall," Kupper said. When asked about the complexity of the model, Peter Kupper says: "The model is complex, yes. And it is not always easy to explain it at all levels. Always keeping the master plan in mind in all decisions is probably the biggest challenge." He continues, "We hope, of course, that customers also notice that we work according to this integral model." The deciding factor is customer satisfaction, says Kupper. "This is very high at Digicomp." Does the EFQM Excellence Model also help in positioning the company in general? "Unfortunately, the model is still not widespread enough," regrets Peter Kupper. "As a user, you move in a small circle. And within this circle, the value of the model is correctly assessed and rewarded accordingly."

AKAD Business, part of the Kalaidos Education Group, has also embarked on the EFQM path with SAQ and has already successfully achieved numerous milestones. "EFQM is an optimal support to screen and optimise corporate management from the relevant perspectives. It keeps us fit," says Director Claudia Zürcher in this regard. "EFQM helps us to meet the cantonal requirements in the area of quality management." Since AKAD Business has been using the model, there has also been an increased awareness of process optimisation, she says. "We keep a cockpit with qualitative and quantitative key indicators," Claudia Zürcher continues. However, she describes the challenge in implementing the model as the ever-present question: "Will we gain one more student as a result?" Currently, AKAD Business does not use EFQM for positioning the company in the market. "A person interested in education primarily has other motives for choosing an educational institution," says Claudia Zürcher. It's actually nice when consumers of education can almost tacitly take quality for granted...