Quality Profession Benchmark 2022

Benchmarking is an important tool many businesses use to make decisions. It can be used to make decisions to deploy a new product or service, implement an improvement process, or embark on a change programme that will reap rewards to their customer base (both internally and externally).

Professionals are good at using data and resources available to them to explore different benchmarks. But do they use such tools to benchmark their own professional development? Staying relevant in the market does not have to be a cumbersome task.

The Chartered Quality Institute released its Workforce Insights Report for 2021-2022. The report is accessible to all members directly from the membership area, but you can get a summary right here. I wanted to share my 3 take aways from the report:

• A total of 77% of Quality Professionals feel valued by their employers; and 81% feel their organisations value Quality Management in general. These are some great numbers and demonstrate how Quality Professionals have evolved a lot in how they conduct and deliver outputs. Many companies do not view Quality as a nice to have, but as a must have to ensure their business model is built for success.
• 57% of professionals surveyed identified that they will remain in the profession when it comes to their next career stage. I personally think that once a Quality Professional, always a Quality Professional. In my experience working with many businesses in different sectors, my role has always been about driving improvements and making a difference; whether it was a quality specialist, a total quality manager, an auditor, or a business improvement lead.
• Two-thirds (67%) said their organisations had struggled to recruit sufficiently competent people to quality or audit roles in the last 2 years. This is an eye opening percentage that emphasise the leading role all Quality Professionals have to play today, to ensure we have an excited and committed emerging talent. Quality skills are transferable skills for life. We have to look into ways to recruit fresh graduates, engage with mentoring programmes, work with educational charities such as STEM.

Whether you participated with the research or not, it is a good report for you to benchmark your current status against key trends in the market. If you are affiliated with the CQI | IRCA, head to your membership page and access the report now. If you are a Quality Professional who is not affiliated with any professional body, get in touch with me now and I can help point you in the right direction.