D&D News Autumn 2008 - some of our work
Our UK work has seen us travelling widely, ranging all points north and west from our Kent bases. Destinations included Belfast, Exeter, Birmingham and Liverpool (where Derek was briefly let loose to take this photograph at the Albert Dock) as well as London.
More organisations seem to be using accreditation schemes such as Levels of Excellence and Investors in Excellence. Reasons include gaining the external feedback to help improvement efforts and promoting achievement to customers and suppliers. Both reasons are valid and it is encouraging that the Excellence Model is still actively used as an improvement framework.
As we ask on the front page of this issue, we wonder if the economic climate will encourage even more organisations to focus on the wider stakeholder picture represented by the Model to improve their sustainability?
Amongst the Recognised for Excellence assessments done recently, Dave was particularly taken with the work of Linkage Community Trust, which provides a range of specialist education, care services and supported employment for people with learning difficulties. We have also validated a mental health organisation for Committed to Excellence.
Other examples of the variety of work we are doing includes Investors in Excellence assessments, helping prepare a submission for that accreditation, and briefing a large retail organisation on ways they might use the model in the development of a new centre. Not to forget, of course, Derek's trip to Abu Dhabi mentioned on the Awards page of this News.
We also take our excellence membership responsibilities seriously (well, with a dash of humour as well) and try to support both the BQF and London Excellence in their drives to promote Excellence and the Model. We have attended network meetings at Canary Wharf and South Bank University with London Excellence and Derek continues to produce newsletters for some BQF Sponsor member meetings – the last being held at Interserve in Birmingham.
