Why Are Quality Circles Struggling in Public Sectors? Seeking Ideas to Boost Engagement

TQM helps in maintaining good quality throughout the organization. Quality circles are a very important part of TQM. Quality circles are basically volunteer movements in any organization, where employees are self-motivated to form circles. I conducted a survey in a public sector, and it is showing poor involvement in quality circles. According to employee perception, they feel that there is no top management support for maintaining these quality circles. No rewards or recognitions are given to motivate people. Some fear that updating TQM day-to-day may lead to demotion, causing demotivation. Top management is not very concerned about quality issues; rather, they focus on setting targets. Those involved in these activities say that it is not possible to maintain a quality circle in a public sector. It is also not practical to ask employees to stay back after working hours to discuss quality issues. Previously, it was a great success, but now quality circles are not meeting. A small discussion could help the organization earn profits in crores, so why hesitate to allocate funds in lakhs?

**HOW TO IMPROVE THE MAINTENANCE OF QUALITY CIRCLES???
Please suggest some ideas.

- How to motivate employees to form quality circles?
- How can top management contribute to and help maintain the circles?
- How to change their attitude towards maintaining TQM?
- Being a public sector, investment may be a problem, so any other non-monetary suggestions?
- Any other ideas? Please help :)

Thanks and regards,

Swathi S

Dear Swathi,

Who says that they fail? Do you have any authentic evidence to confirm that? What do you mean by Public Services? There are public service organizations like BHEL and Bharat Petroleum which have successfully used QCs and even won awards. You need to narrow down your focus; as it is too broad a topic for research.

Best wishes,
Simhan

Thanks for the response! Here, the public sector is BEML Bangalore Complex. They have won the Golden Peacock Award, and they have all kinds of competitions held for the improvement of quality. Unfortunately, they are not making use of their Quality Circles (QCs). Most of the senior employees are feeling this, and there has been no QC meeting for a year. Public Sector entities like BEML will require Quality Circles and their suggestions. Kindly help me find a solution and suggest ways to motivate employees to engage in healthy competition and QCs. How can HRD help employees in their involvement?

Dear Swathi,

What is your role? Why are you interested? It helps us all when people, while sending a query, provide all the details. This saves unnecessary correspondence. What knowledge do you have about QCs, how they operate, and how they are motivated, etc.? All this information is available on the internet.

Have a nice day.

Simhan

Sir, I am a student studying MBA and working on a project on Quality Circles. Due to my interest in HR, I want to focus on the role of HRD in relation to QCs. Quality Circles assist management by providing suggestions and enabling cost-cutting measures. As a student, I have some suggestions, such as recognizing Quality Circle members by providing them with a distinct badge or similar tokens of appreciation. However, as an HR enthusiast, I am seeking additional ideas that I believe I can find here. Your assistance in this matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.